lighten the poundage on sentman delux

[lucky strike]

I have a sentman delux 65#@28" -Iwould like to reduce it by 10 lbs. I have no power tools and can do it  only by hand. I would like to take the weight off from the sides.I have no experience with bow making.Can this be done and how?

Thanks

[strungstick]

Since no one has responded I'll bite;
I'm not familiar with the Sentman delux, but with doing a quick search it appears to be a longbow (ie: not a recurve).  It is going to be pretty tough to reduce the bow by 10 lbs. I'm pretty comfortable in saying you can't do it by only removing material from the sides or edges of the limb. Again, without being familiar with the bow or bowyer I couldn't tell you what percentage of the limb is made up of the glass, obviosuly this is the only lam you can sand the face of.  If your comfortable and set on the reducing the weight, I would start with the edges and round the limb profile.  You could trap the limbs to the face or back, but your not going to reduce much going that route. Take your time, it will take some time doing it by hand with some course sand paper.  Check the limb as you go so everything stays in line.  See how much weight you can remove and then start with the glass.  Again, if the bowyer used .040 glass as apposed to say .050 you will be able to remove less of a pecentage of the glass before you start to compromise the limbs integrity.  Long story short - You will be able to remove some weight, probably not 10 lbs, and if you're not really comfortable in doing this I'd send it to a bowyer and see what they'd charge to have them do it for you. (Since you say "you have no experience in bow making" I'd would suggest you pass on this one and get a bowyer to take off some weight).

[macbow]

I'll give my 2 cents worth. Strungstick gave some good advice overall.

I have on two different longbows reduced from 68 pounds down to about 55 pounds by only reducing the sides and some trapping.

I had a belt sander to speed the process. You have to start with the attitude that if you mess up it's experience.

I'd rasp or sand the sides down evenly until you remove the rounded edge. Then sand a rounded edge back on evenly and measure. repeat as needed.
Ron

[wahoo]

call Gary and send it to him. get a pro job for most likely little money

[lucky strike]

What is trapping??

[Whip]

I haven't done a Sentman, but I do agree that 10# would be a lot.  Not unheard of, but on most bows 10% of the original weight is a safer goal.  As mentioned, the thickness of the glass used makes a difference, and whether or not the bowyer had to chase weight at all when it was originally built.  

Trapping is putting an angle on the edge of the limb so that the belly is narrower than the back, or vice versa.