If you’re into making bows for very long, you’ll eventually start thinking about trying to get better performance, less hand shock, more speed, etc. from the bows you’re building. As I’ve covered in other videos, narrowing the tips is one great way to accomplish all these things. But, if you narrow them too much, you don’t have much left to cut in string grooves. The solution is tip overlays. This video will take you through the process of adding overlays to an osage selfbow, cutting in the string grooves, and finally, cutting a string groove down the belly side of the curve for the string to sit in when the bow is at brace.
You can make tip overlays out of most hardwoods, antler, horn, or any any of the commonly available synthetic materials out there. 3Rivers has some laminated material available here. In this video I use a benchtop belt sander but you could do all this by hand as well. All you really need is a rasp and some sand paper. Also, I’ll soon be uploading a video to my Patreon site that covers tillering for recurves so don’t forget to check that out.
