Back in the spring I was contacted by a gentleman and asked if I would make a bow for him. I told him that the upcoming months were already busy for me as I was planning a bathroom remodel, had plans to be out of town and had several other commitments. He sent me a deposit anyway and told me he was in no hurry.
The weeks turned into months and I would e-mail him every so often with my progress(or lack thereof). He was always very understanding and never once pressured me into hurrying.
I finally got all my commitments taken care of and got the supplies together to start his bow. Everything was going good until I took the bow out of the oven. Sometime during the heating process, my air hose had deflated. I have my oven on a timer and usually put a bow in in the evening and take it out the next morning when it is cool. I do clamp the riser and back lams to the form and wrap the components very tightly with strapping tape before I add the pressure strip, air hose and top form. Any way, here are a few pictures of what I found.
As you can see, the fades and glass on the belly side of the riser didn't mate like they should have. Also , right at the end of the fades, the epoxy was alot thicker than it should have been. There was even a visible void on one side of the fadeout.
I gave this bow up for dead and contacted my client with the bad news. I didn't really know what to do since this has never happened to me before. We kept in contact and decided I would go ahead and try to finish the bow to see if it could be saved.
I was able to seperate the fades in the riser and re-epoxy them. When I rough cut the limbs, the void on the end of the fadeout came out but the glue lines there are still thicker than desired.
The bow finished out 3 pounds lighter than he wanted. I have been shooting it for over a month now and it seems to be holding together just fine. Not only that, this bow agrees with me. I still don't know if it will last for 10 more minutes, 10 days, 10 months or 10 years. I guess in reality, that's a risk with any laminated bow, no matter how good things seemed to go while building it.
I wasn't about to ask him to pay full price for the bow and we kicked around a few ideas that would be fair for both of us. I ended up refunding his deposit(he was very patient in waiting) and I kept the bow. I have had a few offers on it but I really don't feel comfortable knowing the problems I encountered while building it. I'd rather it blow up on me than hurt someone else.
At any rate, this bow was raised from the dead and for that I give all the glory to God as in John 11. 4
Here is how he looks now. The specs are 64" long 44#@28". Riser is kingwood and ebony with a gray actionwood stripe between .030 maple. The overlays are kingwood and myrtle. The limb cores are gray actionwood and the veneers are myrtle with kingwood spliced at the last 9". Mike
Topic: The Lazarus bow (Read 271 times)
