Lee,

Your bow should not drop wt with use. There is something else going on. Did you measure the wt when you purchased the bow??? My guess is that the bowyer sent you the wrong bow or he measured it wrong.

I had the same thing happen to me earlier this year with a very reputable and well know bowyer with whom I’ve done a ton of business. I had ordered 82 lb limbs and when I received the bow I couldn’t believe how easy it was to pull the 82 lbs. After about a month I just couldn’t believe it so I weighed the bow. As I suspected the bow was only 78 lbs. I called the bowyer and he had me send the bow back to him so he could check it out. Sure enough it weighed only 78 lbs. He had a very plausible explanation for the mix up but I can’t remember what it was. At any rate he layed up another set of limbs for me no charge.

Brett

Just curious, have you checked the brace height? Reading up on tuning a bow, checked mine and it was 2 1/2″ under. Set at 8″ as the bowyer recomended definately increased the draw weight

Good point

Well guess what, I’m 58 and been shooting bows for years and just found out, through this web site and TX bow hunters,you don’t just buy a bow and arrows and just start flinging them. The education never ends. I wish I would have lerned sooner.

Two points worth remembering here, as a postscript to a happy ending:

1. I’ve never had a bow string material that doesn’t stretch some, and B50 seems to never quit stretching — I’m talking hundreds of arrows and weeks later, still needing to check it occasionally. When hunting or shooting a lot, I check brace height at least weekly.

2. The scales most of use for weighing bows are notoriously less than state of the art — most commonly they are spring-controlled; the same scales used by outfitters to balance the weight in panniers. Consequently, the same bow on several different scales may show several different weights.

B-50 is like a damn rubberband. I can alter my brace height by putting my bow in my lap and pushing down on the limb tips(thereby stretching the string). Sometimes a quarter inch or more.

That gets me thinking. New post on it’s way.

I would think its a disparity in the scales. We had a bowyer in our area who built beautiful longbows and always said poud for poud his bows would out shoot anyones well they did shoot great but his scale was off by 11# to the highside. All scales are not created equal.

If you’re going to use a floor scale, at least get a digital rather than old-fashioned spring model. I picked one up yesterday at a big box store for $18 and it reads down to 1/10th pound, steady on.