2nd R/D-Longbow

[Swissbow]

Finally I got everything together to start my second attempt in building an r/d-longbow. First I started with glueing up the riser, it's made of teak,yew and walnut. After cutting out the shape with a jigsaw I used a disc sander and band sander for the riser and the fades


 
Sanding the riser

 
The finished riser


Before the glue up I did a dry run to check if the fades of the riser are ok. After reshaping the form a little bit everything is ready to glue up the bow.

 
Glued up and ready

[jess stuart]

I have used the rubber band method with good results.  I noticed that in your picture that it does not appear to have a pressure strip, pad or whatever you want to call it.  I always used  a pad a little narrower than my lams. to keep the rubber band from applying to much pressure to edges of the lams and causing it to cup or crown the limb.

[kennym]

Lookin good!

What Jess said about the pressure strip,I think Marty uses a strip and another narrow strip for the reasons Jess stated.

[Swissbow]

Thanks for the suggestion of using a pressure strip. I will see how the glue lines turn out on this one and if I'm not happy with it I know where I can improve on the next one.

[Swissbow]

After sanding off the excess glue I checked the glue lines. They look good, much better than those of the first bow. At one side of the riser there is a very small gap at the fade but I don't think that I have to worry about that.

 
after cleaning off the excess glue

[kennym]

Looks like it will be a sweet shooter. Fun,ain't it??

[Swissbow]

It shure is fun...

But yesterday while I was trying to string it up the upper limb cracked and delaminated completely. I'm not sure why this happend but I guess that something was wrong with the epoxy. Maybe I didn't mix it right although I always use a kitchen scale to measure the components to get it right. Perhaps I inhaled to much of the epoxy vapors and made an error at calculating how much hardener and resin I need.

Since this is not the first bow I crack, I know that I will be very pissed for a couple days but after that I'm ready to start the next bow.

[V-Archer]

What kind of epoxy glue are you using?  I use Smooth-On and it never failed on me.

[Swissbow]

I use Standard L epoxy and I never had issues until now. I have used it for glueing lams, glas and backings and it always worked fine for me. But as I mentioned earlier maybe I have messed up the mixing of the two components. I still have something left so I will give it another try and if it works fine then I'll know that it was me that messed up.