Take down recurve

[bassmatt72]

Ok. I had some good time in the shop this afternoon. When I stopped yesterday there was just a few little things to finish the press. What can we do with this pile of screws and washers?

Drill a hole in one side.

Space them out evenly, drill a pilot hole for the screws and attach the washers.

The screws are just tight enough to hold the washers in place but will roll down with a little pressure.

The idea here is the washers will help keep the laminations from sliding around when they have slick as greased owl snot glue all over them. When the lams are stacked and the pressure hose is in place the washers are up, when the pressure hose is inflated the washers will "roll down" and out of the way ensuring good compression from the hose. also, in the press on one end is a pin to but the lams against when placing and compressing them in the form. I only took one pic and that is a pic of marking the location.

[bassmatt72]

Form is finished! On to the next step! I'm doing some accent strips in the riser so I need to figure out where I'll put them. First I cut the riser block and strips down to 16", finished riser length is going to be 15"

I had an idea where I wanted things but I had to look them over and do some measuring and thinking....well, its decided! I'm going to place the strips closer to the front of the riser trying to not cut out much of them when I do the final shaping of the riser. Looked, measured, looked again, remeasured, looked and decided. Measured, marked and cut.



The riser wood is bubinga with curly maple and walnut accents. That bubinga is some pretty wood! I'll try and get a closer pic. later.

[bassmatt72]

Home computer is acting up and not letting me post anything, this is from my phone. I did a lot more work, but I'll have to try and post it tomorrow.

[bassmatt72]

Alright, yesterday I began doing some of the "glue ups". First I cleaned and prepped my work area, and started bringing the hot box up to temp.


Next I placed some wide masking tape on the face of the fiberglass to protect it from the epoxy and scratches. We also need to do this so we can have a center line for reference. Found center and used a regular ball point pen to mark it.

[bassmatt72]

Next I'll rough up the glue surfaces a little just to give the epoxy some texture to grip. I'll use a stiff wire brush for the clear fiberglass and only scrub it length wise, just being careful not to put any major scratches in it that might be visible after glued.

On the wood I was a little more aggressive and used a homemade tool that I got the plans from some dude in Hawaii??? Its a hacksaw blade doubled over and screwed to a handle.

From here on I will not touch the glass or lams with my bear hands, I'll have on rubber gloves. I do this for two reasons, first I'm trying to keep any contamination off of the lams and glass. Second, we getting ready to be using epoxy and it will get all over the place! The dude in Hawaii that I got the plans for the tool from, he uses denatured alcohol to clean the lams. Some people say not to use anything on them, but I've done it with no problems so far? So, I wiped down the glass and lams with denatured alcohol and then put everything into the hot box to preheat it all. I do this to be sure the alcohol is all evaporated and to open the grain of the wood to help the epoxy hold.


After preheating everything I'll put a coat of paste wax all over the form, this helps get any epoxy off that might squish out and the limb from sticking to the form.


Cover with plastic wrap.

Alright, I didn't get any pics of the next part. I was too busy getting it all done and I didn't want to get epoxy all over my camera. Here's what I did. Lay all the lams out in order, mixed equal parts of Smooth On Epoxy, used a thin scrap piece of wood to spread epoxy on all sides of glass and laminations that would be touching, stacked in order and placed in form.
Putting the epoxied lams in the form is like what I would imagine trying to stack fresh water eels covered in greased owl snot would be like!!! Remember the washers, they help. When I finally get the lams close I start using strapping tape to hold them in place, you can see this on the next pic, until I can put the pressure strip, hose, and top of form in place. Apply 60ish psi to air hose and check, double and triple check to see if the lams have shifted any. No, good put it in the hot box.

Next, same process with the laminated riser block.

The aftermath of it all!

One thing I didn't mention. I'm using clear glass over a dark lamination of walnut, when using clear glass we want to be very careful to not allow and specks of dirt, wood, paper or anything between the glass and the lamination. Two reasons, we want to keep it clean for a good glue up and also it will be seen through the clear glass. I don't know about you but the only thing I want to see in the limbs of my bow is the beautiful wood under the glass!

[bassmatt72]

Spec on the curing time and temps.
I run my hot box around 180 degrees and let my glue ups "cook at that temp for at least five hours. I then let it all cool slowly until the internal temps of the hot box is close to the air temp. Which means I glued this up yesterday and let it cool over night, I didn't get much sleep wondering how it was going to come out!!!

[chackworth3]

Looks good Matt!

[bassmatt72]

Well, I got up early before work and headed to the shop for a look at the bow. Here is everything out of the hot box!

The riser block looks good, plenty of glue come out of the joints!


Ok, this is my first take down recurve. I am a Christian and I do believe in God and prayer. So, I'm praying this comes out of the form looking good!

Oh Boy! this is kinda like opening a Christmas present!

Oh No! This is kinda like opening a Christmas present that you really didn't want! The pressure strip slid a little to one side, I hope I still got good compression on that side. If you look close you can see the pattern of the air hose in the extra epoxy so I'm hopeful that it going to be good.

He He He! This is getting really fun!

[bassmatt72]

Here we can see how those washers I put on "rolled " down when I inflated the air hose. I guess we can say they worked.

Plenty of glue squished out if the joints. I'm getting really excited about this!

Who Who! With just a little encouragement its out of the form!

If any of you all do one of these be careful of the excess glue drippings after they are cured, they can be very sharp and will draw blood! At least that's what someone told me?

I still had a little time before I had to head out to work and was very curious about how it was looking. So, I started cutting and sanding off the excess glue just down to the point of being able to see things.


One of the toughest spots to get a good tight glue line is around the fades of the wedges, I think this one is looking good!

A look at the wedge, its curly maple.

Now a look at the riser accent strips. These are curly maple and walnut, the maple will be the really light color you see at the end where there isn't any glue.

If you didn't catch it earlier, I'm now at work and as of right now I have 15 hours and 35 minutes to finish my shift...........
I really enjoy my job but, I'd rather be in my shop working on this bow!

[caughtandhobble]

Looking good bro!!!

[Greywolf in Hawaii]

Looking Good Matthew !!

It's a lot of "fun" work to make a bow. "I like the idea of if in doubt add more epoxy"
Not doing a lot of bows like Bob does, we can sorta over do it with the epoxy.

I'm following, I was going to post a Longbow take down build, but your first go for it !!!!

[EnW]

That is looking great Matt!

[River Rider]

Looking good. A lot of talent there. Kind of make me want to try something like this one day.

[LeanMachine]

Looking good. I found that you can get away with cheap plywood for a form with no issues. I used cheap pine and clamped it to my tablesaw top when i glued it up to correct any warp. If there were voids in the laminating surface, i just filled them with wood filler and then saturated the filler with super glue after it dried. I sealed the entire surface with superglue eventually. It came out so smooth that i saw no need for putting a strip on top of it, but i definitely put some time into it.

[bassmatt72]

I just got off of a 24 jour shift that was tough, we ran several long calls during the night. We never even made it to bed. So, I get home and I haven't slept in 28 hours, do I have bags under my eyes?

Oh, coffee is good!

I hope someone is out there thinking this is cool and might want to do one themselves so I'm trying to share some things I've learned. Here is something. If you do one and you come across a little string of fiberglass hanging off the edge of the lam......DON'T PULL ON IT!!!!!

This is just a little thread of fiberglass that runs out and off the side of the glass. If you just pull this it could poss angle back into the glass and cause a major blemish. I took my razor knife and trimmed this in the direction of run out. That would be cutting from left to the right in the picture. I also managed to glue up and cure the second limb today