Friend picked up some old bows thinks they are lemonwood.
Anybody ever reworked any? Still safe to shoot?
Old lemonwood bows generally can be re-taught to shoot but they should be exercised slowly from unbraced to full draw. Even improper bracing can be damaging.
I have 4 old lemonwood bows of different styles and I prefer to keep them as they are and appreciate their place in archery history.
Don't go to full brace height straight away and don't pull it until it has sat at half brace for a few hours and then had its brace height increased slowly until full brace with a good few hours at each new higher brace.
What happens to old wood bows is that the belly will 're-expand' to its original untillered/uncompressed state. When a bow gets to this point (after not being shot for years) the back is still as it was when tillered and shot in but the belly has essentially got stiffer. The back got used to being a 30lb back(or whatever) and if you just string it up and pull it back the belly is now acting like a 40lb'er and the extra strain put onto the back may well cause it to lift a splinter and fail.
So go very slowly.
Yep, I exercise them on the tillering tree like I'm making the bow all over again. 40 pulls at each inch mark, watching for flaws in the tiller. Finally, after exercising at full draw many times, I go shoot it, beginning by shooting it at partial draw and gradually working back to full draw.
Thanks all.
Bring them to mojam so I can check them out!
Hey Im the Fella MAcbow was talking bout.. bought a big lot of misc bows couple weeks ago, 3 or 4 in it are old longbows of 30-35# weights.. no real markings of any sort,.. several seem to have an almost "Micarta" type backing... This link will take you to a Album that has all the bows in it,, wont take long to see which ones im talking about.. Lots of history in this pile.. going to refurb quite a bit of it,, sell some to recoup my cost, hang some on wall. donate some of the run of the mill glass bows to our Living history club so the kids can shoot at rendezvous..( those will be stripped and made up to look like "indian" bows.)
https://goo.gl/photos/8fAqQgkwLdWyjhEQ7