EVERYTHING About Using & Making A Tillering Tree, Stick, & Board

Hey everybody, thanks for joining me today. It's an awesome day because today we're covering everything tillering boards, tillering trees, tillering racks, tillering, yeah. If you're new here, my name's Kramer Ammons and it is my pleasure to meet you. Thank you for being here and I hope today I'll be able to add a little bit of value to you. Gonna share all the knowledge I have and that I have gathered about this topic of why it's important to have a tillering tree or a tillering board or a tillering rack or a tillering stick and the differences in the two. Where do they excel and where do they fall short? Gonna go through all the pros and cons and how to build them both. Let's get right into it. Last video we launched our website and we're starting to sell some bow strings up there and we have some people that bought some so that's awesome. But if you were one of the first ones who got on to buy some bow strings, I wanna apologize because I didn't have it all worked out. And so as I figured this out, thank you for your grace. So if your purchase got denied, it's up, it's running, you're good to go. We still have the sale on through the holidays. If you order now, I can get it to you by Christmas. So you're gonna wanna order as soon as possible. But I thank you for your support. It humbles me and it's awesome that you're here. I really do appreciate it. As I'm editing this video, I realized I forgot to tell you the features of the bow string so you can know if this bow string's for you. So the first thing is I sell a tillering bow string. So if you make any bows at all, that bow string is gonna be for you. Secondly, right now I only offer one type of material as a bow string because I'm in the process of testing like five or six other types and different hybrids to see which ones actually perform the best. But the type of bow string I offer now is 100% polyester. It's called B55 by BCY. And it's supposed to be a little bit faster than Brown Owl B50, but it's supposed to still be really, really soft. And I've used it on many wood bows. I've used it on the poplar wood bow I've made and it works really well. The benefit to that is it's really quiet and it's really low impact on your bow. And I do a lot of little special tweaks to make them as good as possible. So I just wanted to share one of those features with you. Most people on a Flemish twist string do a six inch fade out on your loop. I extend that to 12 inches, 10 to 12 inches because it makes your bow string quieter and it's just smoother shooting overall. There's so many little features I try to put into these bow strings and I'll tell you them more in the future. But if you need a bow string, head over kramerammers.com or check the link in the description. Thanks guys for letting me tell you about this. It's a great way that you can support me on my YouTube channel. And then at the same time, I think you guys are getting the best bow string possible. Everybody seems to call these things differently. But for the purposes of this video, I'm going to be calling this a tillering stick. And we're going to be calling the pulley system that we're going to make a tillering tree. I have always used this tillering stick, but I've never really used tillering board. The reason is, is I've been so portable. I've moved like five times in the past four years and I've never actually taken the time to set up a whole tillering board. I could have made one that is portable, but I just never took the time to do it. But today we're going to do that. And we're going to refurbish and refinish this one to make it nicer, more functional and more realistic so that we can have better results when we're tillering our bows. So first we're going to start off with this tillering stick or tillering board. And we are going to refurbish it. We've got a couple problems with it to this point. One, I didn't put notches in here. I actually made this about 10 years ago. I used a handsaw to try to cut some of this out. Of course, this is just from an old pallet I found, but we can make this a lot nicer. You know our motto around here, if you make it nice, you'll take care of it. All right, the first thing I want to do is I want to cut down these lips on either side of this old pallet board. I also want to clean up where there's old saw marks and just kind of clean this whole piece up. Then after that, we'll re-mark out these marks and re-cut the grooves to make them nicer and better and make sure my measurements are right from 10 years ago because I actually think they're off a little bit. I think this came from an oak pallet and after sanding it, it looks really good. I was going to paint it, but I think I'm just going to put a finish on it and let it be pretty. A pro to this is that it's going to hold the bow statically. So you pull it down to where the notch is that you want it to hold at, and you can step back and it holds the limb static so you can mark it. That's also a con because if the limbs are being stressed at the same distance for a long period of time, it's kind of like you're drawing a bow back all the way and just holding it there, which can put undue stress on the limbs, especially when you're tillering it and you're looking at it and marking it. If it's bent at 28 inch draw length for 15, 20 seconds, that's unnecessary stress for any kind of bow, especially if you're making a bow that is a wooden bow. That can lead to bow failure if you leave it up there too long. So that's a negative, but the positive is that if you have it up there, you can walk up to it, you can mark it. It's really static and easy to look at. We got the top cut in. I thinned out the side where all the notches were, so I'll recut the notches. The notches, where do you cut the notches? You've got to measure the draw length and draw length for most people is measured from the back of a bow. So if I have a bow in here, the back of the bow is gonna be where the draw length is measured from. Although some people do measure from the inside of the handle. I think it's more universal to measure from the back of the bow and it's more consistent that way because the depth of the inside of your handle could be different, but the back of the bow is always gonna be the back of the bow. Average is about an inch and a half from the depth of your handle to the back of the bow. So I'll measure from the crux or the crotch or the very bottom of this part, I'll measure up an inch and a half and then from an inch and a half above the bottom of this U shape, I'll measure down from there to mark out all of my markings for my draw length. So for my handle, it's about an inch down. So we're gonna wanna go a half an inch above. I'll start at six inches and work my way down from there. I don't need any notches above that. Another pro to the tillering stick or the tillering board is that it's really portable. It's just this one thing and you can put it in a vice. You can even just set it down on a table or something and draw it, pick it up and look at it. So if you have a small space or you're gonna go somewhere and build a bow, it's really portable, really easy to make also out of just one board. Okay, so we've got all of our marks marked out and I'm gonna take this over to my chop saw. I'm gonna set a depth stop on it so I can just cut, maybe the width of two saw blades will be enough for notches in each one of these. Hey, so the battery died on my saw so I'm gonna pause on this, let that charge. As we do that, let's get started on the tillering tree. So for the tillering tree, I have a scrap piece of wood right here. It's a two by eight. I want a two by six. So I'm gonna rip this down so that we can have a two by six and it's gonna be finished length is gonna be 48 inches, which we are already at, so I just need to rip it down. All right, make it an actual two by six. Now the pros to a tillering tree, it's pretty easy to see what's going on because you're such a distance away from it, you have plenty of time to pull the pulley, let the limbs bend and look at it and then you can release it down after it just holds for a second and then pull it again. And that's really easy to step back and just got to kind of get a bird's eye view of what's going on and how those limbs are bending rather than pulling it down on the tillering stick and trying to step back and get visuals of it, but get up close enough before it sits there too long. So that's where the tillering tree excels. Another positive to the tillering tree is that you're able to exercise the limbs really easily. You'll have a couple of pulleys, so you have a mechanical advantage and you're able to exercise it instead of like pulling down a ton of times or drawing the bow back with your hands a ton of times. It's just easier physically and I think it speeds up the tillering process. Okay, so on this one, we want to cut a notch out of the middle here, a two inch notch. Find the center two and three quarters and from there, you can go an inch on either side of that. Doesn't have to be exact. I'll just come down an inch and we'll notch that little section out. Found a kitchen scale, much cheaper than it would be to buy an actual bowier scale. This one goes up to 110 pounds, so I'm hoping this one will work well. We've got a couple of pulleys. So as far as the location of the pulley, I've got a wall and ceiling mount pulley here. I'm gonna come an inch up off the bottom, but left and right, where does it go? That actually depends on how you lay out your bows and it also depends on how you shoot, if you shoot three under or split finger. It just so happens that the way I lay out my bows and because I do shoot three under, it's gonna be in the very middle of my board. But if I were to shoot split finger, that's gonna move over just a little bit. The reason this matters is because your middle finger is where the most pressure is gonna be on the string when you draw back. And so for the most correct tiller, that's where you want your pulley to be pulling from. This is the most realistic setup. I'm gonna go ahead and put it in the middle, but not just randomly, but that's where it works out the best for me. So my tillering tree is as realistic as possible to how I actually am going to shoot the bow. Another positive to the tillering tree is that you can add a scale like this one to it as you're pulling it. And so as you're drawing it down, you can draw it to your intended draw weight and then stop there. Opposed to on a tillering board, it's gonna be harder to judge the draw weight and you could overstress the limbs easier without having a scale. And the cons to a tillering tree, there's two of them. One is just not portable, but if you have a stationary workshop, that's not a problem at all. The second negative to having a tillering tree is gonna be you can't hold the limbs in place and walk up to it and mark on the bow. That is unless you build a mechanism to lock it while it's pulled down, which I may do. I've got a small piece of plywood here that's gonna go on the top to hold the bow in. I'm gonna pre-drill on this. And then what I can do is if the handle width is wider than an inch and a half, I can just add another small piece of this plywood and shim it out. Or if it's smaller, I can add a piece of plywood behind it so that it can go smaller. I can adjust it every like three eighths of an inch for the size of the bow so that it has a snug fit when I'm tillering. Liking it. Okay, I'm gonna take the pulley off, go spray paint this, and then we'll get back to the saw on the tillering stick. All right, back to cutting. Boom, baby. Looks a lot better. Let's give this a little sand and then the finish. I should have painted outside. Goodness gracious. That's strong. Let's open the door. I'm gonna apply a finish. And you know, this isn't perfect, but it's gonna make me feel so much better using it like this and it's more functional, which I really like to go for. But even on top of that, when something looks nice, it just makes you enjoy using it a lot more. At least it does for me. Oh, and that's one way to spill the finish everywhere. That's pretty good, though. I put the finish on and everything and I forgot to do the inch marks in it. So I'll have to wait for that to dry and we'll see if the Sharpie will stick on this finish and if it doesn't, then we'll scrape it off and redo that, but that's minor. So let's go back over, grab the piece of wood that we just painted. We're gonna screw that. Actually, we'll wait on that pulley. We need to figure out how we're gonna mount this to the cinder block wall with some anchors. So we've got this wall right here that we're gonna mount the tillering tree onto. So we need to figure out where. Six foot, level up. Something else is that I want the bow at my eye level. I don't wanna have to look up or down for it. Right here at that cinder block is where I put a mark and that's where the top of the tillering tree is gonna go so that it's easy for me to look straight at it so that I can see how the limbs are bending the best way possible. I'm gonna drill one hole into the cinder block wall. I can match that up with a screw through this two by six and then on my other pre-drilled holes, I can use a long masonry bit to go through the pre-drilled hole in the wood and go directly, ah, still wet, and go directly into the cinder block wall so that I do not have to measure and try to mark the holes exactly. Let's do six, because I do not want this to come undone. Okay, so this first one, eight and a half inches down and two and three quarters from center. Eight and a half inches down, two and three quarters over, and then from there, we can mark all the other holes after we get that one done. All right, now all I have to do is line up my screw with my anchor. Boom. Now I can just level that board down and then use the hammer drill to mark all the other holes, pull the board back off, put the anchors in, screw it in for the final. This will be sweet. I'm excited for this. All right, we're level. These wall and ceiling pulleys are nice because they provide a handy hole right there. So we'll tie the rope off and then from here, it'll go up through the pulley. That pulley will be connected to the scale or just connected directly to the string and then we'll bring it back down through there. I can already see a problem I have as I draw the bow. The bow's touching the center block wall. So what I think I need to do is to get one of these thin pieces of plywood. I'm gonna put it on the back and I'm gonna shim this out one length of plywood and that should move that entire bow about a quarter inch away from the wall. I think that'll be enough clearance in this situation. Let's do it. The moment when you stand around and look for 10 minutes for the screw you dropped. Aha, we got clearance. Oh yeah, that did it. If I make a skinnier bow, I've got more of these little pieces of plywood, I'll just shim it in or I can shim it out further if I need to. Let's hook this up and draw back. That's so cool. Another tip or another, I guess, really good thing about this sort of a method is that your pulley's gonna drift to the side of your strongest limb and that's something the tillering stick can't do but here, your pulley will always drift to the side of the strongest limb, especially as you exercise the limbs like this. So that's a really cool benefit to this. 44, 45, 45, 45. Why do you need a 45 inch draw length? The average person wouldn't but maybe, just maybe I could pull it off. This is where that extra draw length comes in handy because I wouldn't be able to fit the scale on there if I wasn't able to pull it down further. This, this is done, solid piece of wood. I like this a lot better. Our tillering stick is done and our tillering tree is done and if you call this a tillering tree like I have before, well, I'm sorry. I'm happy that this turned out really well. I think it turned out really well. This is sweet. If you can swing that 30 bucks, go for it. I think it's worth it. This, I've made probably 30 bows with it. It works as well. So I think this is gonna help. I think it's gonna make it faster. I'm excited to test it out. I'll know more here soon but from what I've researched and what I know, that's the way to go but you can use both and I'm gonna probably integrate both depending on what my project is. Thanks for joining me. I am humbled to see that 600 plus of you guys have subscribed and that even more people are watching. That 600 is only about 10% of our views so there's a lot of you out there. I appreciate it. It humbles me. I really am grateful. Put 600 people in a room and I'd pee my pants. So it's nice to be able to hang out with all of you at once through the camera. Thanks guys. Leave a comment because I love getting to know you guys. I've already met a lot of you and it means a lot to me so keep up the good work. Stay positive. You're awesome and we'll see you on the next video. You know how much easier that is to exercise the limbs here? This is what I used to do. I'm just kidding. I caught it. What if I just whacked the camera? Just like. No. That was a really bad idea.