I was thinking about trying to reinforce the limb tips on an older howatt hunter so it could take ff type strings. Posted the tech question on the bowyers forum, but I know this one gets more traffic. Anyone tried this? Or is this a recipe for disaster?

I think if you reinforce the tips with Phenolic and pad your loops you should be fine.

I should have added. I shoot a skinny string on my '59 Bear Grizzly. I replaced the original tip overlays with 3 layers of Phenolic, Shaun Webb twisted me a string at Compton last year. Been shooting it for a year with no problems.

You cant just lay some pnenolic on there and exspect -- problem cured.  The shape of the groove is as important as the material. Where the string lays needs to be teardrop shaped with absolutly no edges for the string to bind on. Those Y grooves on the belly side are not needed and create a weak spots. The recurve tips I have seen fail split down those Y grooves. All you need is a center groove in the high spot of the curve belly side.

My buddy Dennis(Adeeden) give me a skinny string the loops are padded for my kodiak hunter and I havent noticed any issues.

Why?

I had two Howatt Hunters and did a reinforcement on one of them.
The Hunter is a pretty studly bow already and in the end I found it was not worth the brain damage that it took to do it right. Sure it was different, but better? I don't know.

Joshua

yes, limb tips will probably need reinforcing, and bow string loops should be padded.  BUT, summa those older stick bows had dubious glass work and construction processing - i'd still be wary.  i'd stick with dacron, for safeties sake ....

Thanks Gents,

Rob, that's kinda what I thought...