i am currently building a 64in tip to tip r/d laminated longbow for my uncle. to night i got it roughly to shape and decided to shoot it a couple of times. it really slings an arrow, but the hand shock is awful. the past two bows i built were both 62in and i trapped the limbs on them, and they both have very little shock what so ever. i intend to trap the limbs on this bow as well. just wondering if there is something else i can do to reduce the shock.
thanks, eric

If the limbs dont recover at the same time, you get alot of hand vibration. Put a limb tip protecter on one end then the other as you shoot it. If one way it looses some shock, you need to reduce the opposit limb to slow it down.  Theres other factors, but this is a good starting point if you have other bows built off of this form that work.
  Mark

thanks mark. i'll give that a shot.
eric

i did like mark suggested, and found that if i put a limb protector on the bottom limb it helped. my question now is how do i lesson my top limb without messing up the tiller? the top limb is already bending 3/16" more that the bottom.
eric

If all it took was a limb protector on the bottom limb, then it won't take much to correct the tiller, and reduce the hand shock, 1/4" or more positive tiller isn't unusual. How wide are the tips?

Limb tip mass is also a culprit as is light arrows. Both easily remedied.

has anybody ever seen a SLOWMOTION of a bow being fired? The limbs aren't moving forward similtaniously, not at all!

yes, even on straight, symmetrical bows. But, imagine you'd be right, wouldn't a Yumi kick in the hand tremendously? well, it doesn't.

the big problem guys, is the wrong tiller/wrong frontprofile. If you want your outterlimbs to be wide, they should bend alot (or have alot of taper, 0.008 or even more in glass bows, wich will increase stacking, so you actually don't want this.

99.99% of all bows are designed for a normal tiller, and need narrow tips. This means 1/2" or even less. I like 3/8" on longer bows, some of my shorter ones have a tad under 1/2".

the latter is the solution I suggest. Narrow the outterlimbs/tips so they taper to 3/8" nocks and you lose most of your handshock.

Nick

You are wise beyond your years Nick.
you have been given a few ideas about what can cause it and they all can be the culprit, Change one thing at a time and tweak your design, then you know what to do the next time. good luck

This  method is guaranteed to get rid of all hand shock.




 
Couldn't resist........

Yep , that'll work  

yap but it'll increase the ankleslap.

like sombody said, take weight off farther out on the limb and it wont change your bend much at all. And this will bring down the mass, to speed it up a bit.
And in theory, the weight of the limb protecter is all the weight you should have to take off. You can probably do that with the tip.