You all put up with my endless questions as I waffled and procrastinated my way to laying up what is really my first solo bow... It's now in the oven. I'm sorry to say that it did not go well :^( I won't know till tomorrow how bad it is, or even if it will be usable. But, however many problems there were, it did go, and I sure learned a lot... the hard way, but a lot. Something built of wood, glass and epoxy is now cooking. I have been keeping a Bowyer's Log of everything I've done along this road and sharing it with the Hill Longbowmen. Today's entry is very long, but several of the guys asked me to really tell them the details... If you feel like wading through this... here it is:
Bowyer’s Log - Jan. 15, 2009
Warning: This installment is R rated. Language and Content Some scenes described may be disturbing to small children, the weak of heart and especially those contemplating bowyering…
Second Warning: This is a serial production. To find out the end, you will have to tune in to the next installment….
After months of preparation, much of it shared with you folks on the list, today was “The Day”… I procrastinated with every shop fixup and improvement I could think of, practiced with tools, sought information endlessly on multiple lists, but finally, even I had to admit that all of it would mean nothing if something didn’t go into the oven. I had made lams, made a riser, decided on a recipe or layup formula, cleaned the garage of sawdust and such… it was time.
I have been asked to share how it went…. Remember… this was requested. Although I shall gloss over some of the more terrifying moments, I assume no responsibility for illness, injury, or madness resulting from reading this description.
Things started off fairly well. I had my layout table set up. I covered it with two layers of neatly taped down newsprint paper. (My wife buys roll ends from the local weekly’s printing plant.) I laid out tools and materials… ooops… I never got around to cutting my pressure pad material, a heavy soft plastic floor molding that comes in three inch height. No big… measure, draw lines, cut and there are two nice 36” pressure pads. Hmmm… pressure pads… what goes over those? Oh, yeah… aluminum pressure strips… Where the %^& did I put the ones we cut for Boyd’s bow? Up close to the ceiling with long pieces of wood, raw bamboo, old wire, bat’s nests and Uncle Fred’s souvenir of his trip to Australia… a stuffed wombat. Finally found the &*@ things, got them disentangled from everything else (“Let go of that, you stupid wombat!) and pulled them down. Ah, now we can proceed.
The belly glass has to be cut into two pieces. I watch Boyd do this with my scissors, so I did the same… “$%^ Oh, no!” Little lengthwise cracks appeared in the glass, running about two inches back on each side of the cut. This is bad… OK, adjust… make sure those ends go on the riser where they will be ground off.
Important: Find out how to cut the glass without this happening!!!
OK, yard the oven out of its corner and get it pre-heating… Crikey, that thing is heavy and awkward, but I got it in place and turned on. When I first built it, I tested it with the recommended 200 watt light bulbs. It went up to 190, so I switched to 150’s. That produced 160. Once again, it came up to 160, but meantime I’ve decided that’s a bit high, so I switched those out for 100’s. Skipping ahead a bit, they turned out to produce a very even, steady 140. Note: There is no thermostat. I bought one, but I’ve heard some tales of them not being the rated temp, and I like the idea of being able to adjust for high heat for riser making and back to low for bow curing.
Preparing the from would be a good idea… I put it in the wood vise and very carefully felt the surface and the edges. Sure enough, there were a few odd glass beads, somehow a couple of tiny ones on the surface and some larger ones on the edges. I very carefully dealt with these, then waxed the top surface as well as the sides.
A word is in order about this form… It was a bit of jury rig made so that I could try making that last flatbow. JD took an old reflexed Hill style bow form, 1 1/2” wide, added 1/2” to the bottom and cut a new form in it for my bow. My intent was for the lam for the bow to be 2”. However, Bingham sent only one piece of glass, rather than the two JD had ordered. Fortunately, he had two pieces of 1 3/4” and we made do, using the 2” piece to surface the top of the form. JD, having years of experience, had no problem keeping the lams aligned 1/4” from the off edge. (This history becomes important later…)
An idea I had seen and thought good was the use of off center washers on the edges of a form to hold the lams in place. Once again, I was faced with a 1 3/4” lams on a 2” form. I ordered my glass from Kenny, and he didn’t have 2”. “What the heck,” said I, “It worked last time…” However, I still liked the washer idea and figured that they would at least help on one side, so I paused in the operation, hunted up 8 appliance washers, ground them eccentric and installed them.
Next I put plastic on the form. I’ve been told that saran wrap, commonly used, is a bit light, but that “common kitchen plastic” is fine. Never could find out just exactly what common kitchen plastic is, but I had a roll of thin mil plastic that felt flexible enough so I used it.
At about that point I checked the oven, found it at 140 degrees and put the lams and the Smooth On in to pre-heat.
I puttered around awhile, a bit over half an hour, then took it all out, laid out the lams and riser in order, carefully brushing them off for about the third time with a clean brush.
At about this time, I felt like I should be in a WW II submarine movie… with claxons going off and someone yelling, “Dive, dive, dive!” However, I took a deep breath, put on rubber gloves and started mixing up a batch of epoxy. Boyd ran short when we did his Hill style, so I was pretty generous, and that worked out well. I had some left over. In future, with experience, I’ll probably use less, but all I could think of was Louis Armbruster in his video saying over and over again, “Don’t starve the glue joints!”
(Aside: Next time I do this, I’m going to follow Louis’ procedures much more closely than I do Binghams! Anybody who claims to have made 1500 bows has to have learned a few things!)
OK, time for smearing epoxy. I had torn up numerous strips of extra newsprint, figuring to change strips for each lam. I glued the back of the first, full length, glass and laid it in, then I started to glue the first piece of the next, two piece, lam. At that point I realized that this was not the way they did it on the Bingham dvd. They placed the next lams on the first, then epoxied them on the form. That’s what I did, and thus ran into my first serious problem. The bottom lam wanted to move as I applied the glue. The lams were equal to the length of the form and there was no way to lock it at the ends. Next time, shorten the lams.
When we did Boyd’s, he did his gluing on the table and carried the lam over to place on the form. I did that for the rest, but I still had trouble with lam movement, which gradually became a nightmare.
After that pair of wood lams came the tapered core lam, then the riser… Here I made a bad error. Not sure why… pure inexperience and mental lapse. I didn’t clamp the riser in position. I placed the next pair of lams, the belly wood, on, then the two pieces of belly glass, leaving the cut ends that worried me sticking up above the riser, where they will be ground off.
Add the pressure padding and the pressure strip, another layer of plastic, then clamps. OK, huge problem… with the riser not clamped, the first clamps on the limbs force everything to shift lengthwise. Figured out the problem, removed the clamps, shoved everything back into position and clamped the riser in position. By this time, I’ve had to lift the plastic to see what’s going on… plastic is all gooey, hands are sticky. BIG MESS!
Get everything corrected and try again. Ooops! Another big problem. Even though I had eased my fades once from the original and shallowed the riser, it was apparent that the pressure fit between the fades and the pressure strip (1/8” aluminum) was just not going to clamp cleanly. Take it apart again, and take the pressure strips to a vice and shape them. Boy, Bingham never showed that, nor had we done it on Boyd’s, which apparently had a longer, shallower riser fade. But, with faith, pluck and perseverance plus a lot of Words of Power, I made that work.
Next came the realization of another huge problem. My clamps wouldn’t clamp level. They canted every which way, pushing the lams around. What the heck?
Examination revealed two problems… first, the inside edges of the openings in the form were not level. This had originally been the unused bottom portion of JD’s old form. The openings were cut with a jig saw. If you’ve ever cut thick material with a jig saw, you know the blade does not remain perpendicular. This apparently wasn’t a problem when we did the last bow, as JD had huge clamps that were true “C” clamps. My clamps have flat upper edges, more of an “H” clamp… which became the lower edges as I tried to clamp the pressure strip. Of course, those flat edges tried to follow whatever tilt the jig saw cut on the inside of the opening had. What a mess!! Patience, time and more words of power eventually got something clamped together, as straight as I could make it.
Next tense moment: I forgot that in my present condition, I have definitely limited ability to lift weight. No way was I lifting that form, with 30 some clamps on it, out of the vice, balancing it and carrying it to the oven. Fortunately, Ann has a new employee working with her. He came in and helped me get it into the oven.
The bow went into the oven at 2:30… about 3 1/2 hours after I started. Now I’ve discovered another problem. I would have thought that if my bulbs kept the empty oven at 140, there might be a problem with the bow and form in it, i.e. less volume of space might result in a higher temp. I forgot that the form and clamps would have to heat up. It is now 4:30, and after two hours, the temperature has slowly, slowly climbed up to 125 degrees. I’m hoping this is no big deal if I just leave it in longer… maybe 7 hours.
Note: Went out to dinner and came back at 6:00 to find the oven at 140.
Did I mention that there are no specific curing times on the Smooth On cans, and that the temps that are cited are in Centigrade?
OK, that’s where I am now. Las Vegas is running a parimutual board on whether I end up with anything even remotely usable out of this mess. You can call 1-555-5555 to place bets. Personally, I took 3 to 1 against….
Dick
Some Miscellaneous Things I Learned Today:
- Take the time in advance to open all your clamps in advance.
- If you’re inexperienced, don’t work alone. It’s not that you need someone experienced with you to tell you what to do, but there will be many times when you would benefit from an extra pair of hands.
- Always make your bow shorter than your form and arrange some way to block the ends.
- Use a form the same width as your lams, and have some arrangement for fingers at the side to control any tendency for them to move. The washers I used were good on the one side, but weren’t high enough.
- Have a check list… I had a rudimentary one to start with and filled it in as the day went. I’ll refine it and it will be very helpful next time.
- Use the check list to line up your tools and materials. I got pretty frustrated trying to find those pressure strips.
- Double and triple check the fit of pressure strips and risers before gluing.
- Even if you don’t have a helper in the shop, have someone available to bring coffee. You can’t do this kind of high tension work without coffee.
- You’ll learn more the first time than you probably ever will again, and you’ll remember it better!
Oh, yeah, and one other thing… in spite of it all… it was fun! Regardless of what comes out of the oven, I can’t wait to do it again, and do it much better.
Dick
Topic: First bow is in the oven... very long, lots went wrong... (Read 983 times)
