Help me lower costs

[styksnstryngs]

I'm buying supplies for an ILF riser, but the material costs alone are $100. I'm already using the cheapest wood possible, but the fiberglass and phenolic for the accent stripes and I beam raise the price by a large amount, as does the smooth-on. I'm using the fiberglass in the ibeam with the 1/4" phenolic, and one straight phenolic layer as an accent. The price of the phenolic is over $20, and the fiberglass around $18. A pint of smooth-on is $20. Anywhere I can get materials to keep my riser strong enough and bring the price down? I'm buying from bingham's currently.

[EvilDogBeast]

I noticed the same thing on my swap build.  The only thing I was able to do to mitigate some of the cost was shop around and buy certain parts from all of the different suppliers.  I'm not sure about the forum rules for mentioning or reviewing companies so shoot me a PM and I'll tell you about my experience with the places I ordered from.

[Forwardhandle]

I buy 90 % of my material from Kennym , always get it fast & fair priced , even on custom orders ! Plus you can bug him with all kinds of questions , he is good at exsplaining hands on techniques !

[Roy from Pa]

Kenny is the guy you want to contact.

https://www.kennysarchery.com/

[KenH]

Well, you're not gonna cut corners on the Smooth-On; and any equivalent glue is gonna be just as costly. 

It sounds as if all your plastic and fiberglass and phenolic decorative elements are the deal breaker.  All I can suggest is coming up with a design that does not use these elements.  Stick with woods of differing colors.  Everything is getting more expensive

[Roy from Pa]

Kenny also built an ILF riser a couple months ago and there is a thread in here on the build.

Here it is..

http://www.tradgang.com/tgsmf/index.php?topic=156703.0

[Shredd]

It's good to pinch a penny, but don't pinch too hard...  Use quality materials or all will be in vain...  What is the cheapest wood possible for a riser that you are using??
   Besides...  What's a 100 bucks??  You can blow that at the grocery store in a blink of an eye or fill your truck up 2-3 times...  It's all relative...  build a good riser and it will last a lot longer than that bag of groceries...

[EvilDogBeast]

Well it seems to be ok to review a bit, so what I found was that out of the three suppliers I bought from Kenny's supplies are of the best quality and the cheapest.  The two other places, while good experiences service-wise, sent me items that weren't true to length and required some touching up to clean the remaining splinters off the lams.  Also, Kenny sent me a riser block that was already square where as I had to square the other on my own even though it was already cut to dimension.  This didn't leave me much room to mess around while putting in the accent and cutting the shape.  Also as already mentioned, Kenny is extremely helpful and available.  Nice to deal with "the guy" and not a representative.

[Forwardhandle]

Chris I had the same issue with the riser blocks that I got from another source also I ended up making my bow 1/8 less width wise then planed before I got it squared ,it worked out for me but barely the one Im working on now Im using wood I cut from trees last year so I have a lot of width but good to know Kennys are square from the start !

[EwokArcher]

I cut all my maple lams from the hardwood store in 2x 1 inch lumber boards that are 8 foot long at least  for only like 8$. I can get a ton of lams and accent strips from this. For handles I cut up osage logs into boards on my table saw. I use I beams of an dark exotic wood that looks great with the osage. Cost for my last 2 recurves would have been around 25$ each tops using black glass.
Edited my glass wasn't that cheap. 25-35 dollars total is more accurate. Cutting up my own river wood and lams really makes the difference.