This link is from the Otzi the Iceman post by Duckdiver.
http://www.primitiveways.com/bow_tillering.htmlI used to use this trick years ago. I don’t remember for sure if I read it somewhere or it just sort of happened.
Basically the idea is to hang a weight off the nock of one bow limb at a time to help in the tillering process. It goes into much more detail but suffice it to say it’s a really interesting idea.
The other thing that is fun about hanging a weight from the limb (or the strung bow itself) is you can sort of slowly and carefully bounce the weight up and down to stress the bow inbetween taking material off during the tillering process. I’ve never liked having bows that drastically change in shooting characteristics after making them so everytime I would take off any wood the bow got 30-50 full draws to the point I had reached on the tillering tree/stick.
Just place a stopper to keep the weight from dropping too far and over stressing the bow. But with this you can very easily nudge the weight down and let momentum and gravity do the work for you. The weight will bounce up and down and work in the limbs very well with minimal effort on your part. It’s a fun and easy way to work in the limbs. So much easier than drawing it hundreds of times throughout the building process.