Well, as you may have surmised from my lack of activity on this thread, my first limb didn't turn out exactly right. Made a couple of amateur errors, but since I am, in fact, an amateur, I'm not too upset. Just a bit delayed in getting the first bow started right.
First mistake was not adequately protecting the pressure strip from the glue. I'm sure that someone else, somewhere, has ripped and pried an aluminum strip off a fiberglass bow limb before, after epoxying them together. He and I can attest that it is a sick-making feeling!
The big problem however, was an uneven glue up of the top two lams. The top fiberglass and a taper got shifted off to one side -- probably when I aired up the hose. They were off far enough that by the time I got them ground down even, the limb was too narrow for my plans.
I think I'm going to build a new form before I start trying to do this again. The Bingham's blueprints call for an index pin alignment system at the butt end. Unfortunatly, if you build it according to instructions, the limb butt is taller than the index pin. The rest of the stack was fine, but those two lams above the wedge slipped off without the added pressure up against the pin. Also, because the distance between the upper and lower form pieces was consistent, I had less room to work with for checking everyting at the butt end.
I did check it before I set the works in the oven, but apparently not close enough. Oh well, lessons learned and I'll try again after I order a new limb kit.
One favorable note is that my glue lines looked very nice. The wedges faded into the other lams very nicely, almost invisible, and the amount of glue I used looked to be about right. 6 hours at 180 degrees appears to do a good job.
Topic: 6 to 8 hours... (Read 1036 times)
