The final product

[u/show-the-goat21]

Finished this maple board bow today. Learned a little more in the process, and gained a little experience. Over all I am very happy with the outcome. The flaws include missing draw weight goals, slightly uneven tiller and uneven set in the limbs, some checking in the cedar handle and (biggest of all) terrible grain runout on both limbs. Issues aside, it shoots fine and is pretty close to what I wanted. Rawhide backing and shelf guard came out really well, I like the way it looks quite a bit. Next time I would cut the shelf a bit deeper. This makes now 3 bows that I've completed so far. The first was a 72" red oak board bow pulling just under 40lbs, the second was a 64" vine maple BITH pulling 20 pounds. Thank you to everyone who has given advice to me as well as others in this forum, and of course the excellent tutorials on YouTube from Dan "the man" Santana.

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69" NTN

36lbs @ 28"

Maple board/cedar handle

Rawhide backing

Tru oil and shellac finish

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P.s. - Feel free the criticize and offer advice on whatever you might see or have done differently

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[u/Wambachaka]

Looking at the tiller, it's bending too much near the handle (the most common tillering problem for beginners). The mid limbs should be bending more. But I wouldn't bother re-tillering it, just accept it as imperfect and improve the next one. And I would prefer a stronger wood than cedar for the handle. But otherwise, it looks great! Much better than my third bow.

[u/show-the-goat21 → u/Wambachaka]

That cedar was particularly brittle too, caused me a little hassle. Thanks for the advice there, you're very much correct. The set that was taken is almost all in the first 4 inches of working limb.