It is fun to discuss the various aspects of this subject though, I have added my comments below in green.
Please bear in mind that I don't proclaim my comments to be anything other than personal opinions. Opinions that I can and will easily change if I am presented with convincing arguments to the contrary. As I said earlier, but in different words , I'm not a bowyer's bum hole, really, but I do try to understand the principals involved.GrahameA wrote:Hi Mick.
I am not so sure about that. There are few areas that material could be removed without affecting how the bow performs.Mick Smith wrote:... ... that most bows are overbuilt ....
You can remove material from non-working recurves which will lower the mass at the limb extremes and in return provide a faster limb. However, only a small percentage of bows have non-working recurves. Another area is the rigid handle/riser you can remove material which will decrease the overall mass however why are they/were they made so large in the first place?
I would suggest that the design/performance should determine what it looks like. The old saying of form follows function.
I think it's possible to remove weight in most areas except perhaps the parts of the limb that are storing most of the bow's energy. I will discuss tips and risers later.
I am very guilty of building longer bows and am happy to take the decrease in performance in return for other characteristics. As an example - Longer bows are not subjected to the level of stress/strain that shorter bows are and thus have a longer life. I am not willing to sacrifice bow life for more performance - I am willing to invest more in better /stronger materials.Mick Smith wrote:... and that includes the overall length.
This is the crux of the issue. If you're seeking a very efficient bow, you sometimes have to take certain risks. You have to be willing to sail closer to the wind, when it comes to the danger of failure. I know of bows that have been built in this manner, but are still going strong after years of constant use. This is one of the reason why I like osage, it seems to hold up better than many other timbers in this regard.
Shortening a bow may give issues with stacking and finger pinch. So the desired performance may come at the cost of other items. However, they can be addressed by a better design it that option is available. The same story for tips. They can be made small however there are issues - it is not as easy as it seems. Making them smaller and you start to see whip-ending appear and as they get smaller their torsional rigidity decreases.Mick Smith wrote:... a minimal handle, as the handle does nothing other than add unnecessary weight and length to a bow. More good design attributes include a comparatively short overall length, very narrow and minimal tips which remain narrow for as long as possible, reducing weight in this crucial area, which equals added arrow speed.
Finger pinch can affect some people more than others. Personally, I never suffer from it, even when shooting a 48 inch Ben Pearson 'Ambusher' recurve that I have. It must be my dainty fingers, combined with a relatively short draw length. Personally, I don't see how finger pinch could be an issue with any bow over 60 inches in length. Stacking can be an issue, but then again that will come back to the bow's design, more so than any effort to upgrade a particular bow's efficiency. I believe that it stands to reason that a bow of any given reasonable length with a working grip area would be more efficient that one with a rigid handle of the same length. When it comes to tips, I believe this is one area that can easily be made more efficient. I don't simply suggest that they be made smaller. I suggest that they be made slightly differently, ie, very narrow and relatively long (when viewed from the front of the bow), but relatively thick when viewed from the side elevation. Due to the direction of the stresses placed on the tip, a tip made using this formula can be made lighter and yet be just as strong as a more conventional wider tip. The tip section of the limb isn't usually a major working section of the limb.
Osage is not high on my list of timbers. For all the things that it has - and I do appreciate its character - I am unwilling to work with a timber that can be a "pain" to work with as it twists and turns.Mick Smith wrote:... Osage Orange isn't all the same ... .... osage bows tend to have an organic quality ... ...they have 'character'.
IMHO I suggest that people decide what characteristics they want to have, choose a known design that has those inherent characteristics and try to improve them.
As an example
If one seeks a (traditional) short bow with high performance it is hard to go past the Korean bow, The downside is the the skill level and the time to make one is high and long.
At the other end of the spectrum a simple longbow/flatbow is much easier to make.
Add a bit of steaming and recurving ups the performance.
That can be extended in that the recurving can be made greater and you get the side benefit that you can make the N2N shorter without stack and finger pinch.
However, the gains in performance come at the cost in the skill level to make them increases, the time/effort increases and often the 'demanded' quality of the material increases.
