Takedown recurve/longbow

[mzombek]

It’s been a while since I have been to this site. I am thinking of building a takedown recurve or longbow. Does any one know of a site that has a tutorial. I have
built one piece longbows before. The part that I am most interested in is how to make the riser. Seems to be complicated.
Thank you for your help.

[Mad Max]

What kind of machines do you have to make your 1 piece?

[Birdbow76]

I started out with the plans from Bingams projects. Their t/d longbow and recurve are good shooters and the blueprint comes with an instruction manual. Kenny on here has some t/d plans too. There's plenty of videos on youtube showing the process, one of the best is by Stalker Stickbows. I don't think it's much harder to build a takedown over a one piece but there are more steps and it takes a little longer. The most critical step is drilling the holes for the hardware. It needs to be right on the money for the limbs to line up.

[mzombek]

Sorry for the delayed response. I have a table top drill press and table saw

[kenboonejr]

mzombek - I am in the process of building my first Take Down recurve from the Bingham kit.  I am doing videos on it as I go.  If you check out this video it shows how I prepared the riser.  Now this isn't the final shaping part yet, but how I laminated in the accent stripes, cleaned up the squeezed out epoxy, cut to size and cut the 21 degree angles needed for the limb attachments.  This is my first one so I am just a beginner so when you watch the video keep that in mind.  There may be much better ways of doing things that what I did but I have been getting a bunch of help from the good folks here as I move along.  I just glued up my limb tip overlays tonight and am hoping to cut out the riser shape this week.

[Mad Max]

You did a good job on the youtube But
You really need to sand that Phenolic until it's not glossy 120 is good enough for smooth-on

[kenboonejr]

You did a good job on the youtube But
You really need to sand that Phenolic until it's not glossy 120 is good enough for smooth-on

uh oh  - I might have not done such a good job on my limb tip overlays then...   Well actually I probably did a little better on the limb tips probably and I actually did use 120 for those - only cause that is what was close by and easy to grab.  Thank you for letting me know that.  The instructions were a little light in that department.  Just kind of said sand it.

Do you think it will give me any problems on the riser?

[Crooked Stic]

I agree with the phenolic being not shiny. You can glue glass or phenolic over your limb pads on the riser may be some insurance. Time will tel on the glue job.
On your glue boogers on the limb you can rasp the corners off to get them to lay flat on your sander table.

[kenboonejr]

On your glue boogers on the limb you can rasp the corners off to get them to lay flat on your sander table.

Yea at the time I was kind of concerned with taking too much off just being nervous not having done this before, but hindsight now that I have been through the process I see I had plenty of extra on those limbs and that would have been a quick easy solution to get that off. 

Building a bow is like having kids.  Until you go through the process, you can read all you want, but until you go through it, you don't really know jack about it!  And you don't know what you don't know. 

Thanks for the help.