How to do beavertail grips?

[Highlandwarrior]

I've been toying with the idea of beavertail grips on my bows. The ones that have been done seem pretty nice, but the beaver tail skin that I got to try is paper thin and brittle. You can make it soft again by soaking it in water, but it just seems really thin. Is this normal(wondering if I got a tail from a young or sick beaver), if so how durable is it? What works best to glue it on?

[Ricker]

Beaver tails need to be soaked in water to soften them and to make them pliable.  Towel dry them after they get soft and use barge cement on the bow handle and some on the B-tail.  Work it around slowly to stretch fit to the grip by rubbing it around the handle, then once it is form fitted wrap it with plastic wrap while the glue sets up.  Leave the area to be stitched without glue so you can trim and stitch later.  Add more barge cement to the area to be stitched after you have trimmed and made stitching holes......sew it up and ya got it.

Nothing I know of is tougher than Beaver tail.  Good stuff being so thin and tough, it is a pain to work with but worth the effort.
Hopefully my description is clear and understandable enough.

[Highlandwarrior]

Seems fairly straight forward, couple questions though, where do you get barge cement, and can you just over lap and glue it down  without stitching, like the leather on the old bears?

[Ricker]

Places like Lowes here has small tubes.  I haven't tried the overlapping method with beaver, but it seems like it would work as long as it is thin enough and plastic wrapped well to dry.  Leave enough leather so you can rework it with stitching if it wants to peel up.

[loyd]

i use innertube to rap it, pull it up real tite and you cant see the seem when it drys. loyd

[macbow]

If a guy has a fresh beaver,How should the tail be processed? Just split and scraped?
Ron

[split arrow]

macbow thats how i did my beaver tail but the one half i scraped to  much and when it dried it was a little thin.

[wv lungbuster]

Will the barge cement hurt your bow finish if you wanted to remove it?

[Roy Steele]

At one time I caught and used beaver tails before.But I tanned them.After tanned I'd wet so they'll strech when you sewed on.I sewed them on just weted and sewed sewed really tight no glue is needed I did is quite a few times.I've used  also elms white glue,TB,TB1,2 AND 3 they all worked good.

[Ricker]

Originally posted by wv lungbuster:
Will the barge cement hurt your bow finish if you wanted to remove it?

It won't hurt the finish at all.  It doesn't harden totally, just gets sticky enough to hold things down well.  Can be removed easily by rubbing with your thumb, or at most a mild solvent.

[Apex Predator]

Barge cement will disolve some cheap rattle can finishes.

[divecon10]

What's barge cement?

[Apex Predator]

Rubber cement, contact cement, and barge cement are all very similar.

[Jason Kendall]

Here is a link to a thread a customer of mine did a few days ago, the 2nd page has insturctions if it helps. I have never done one but they sure look nice!

 http://tradgang.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=082129

[riivioristo]

I have one Beavertail in the freezer just waiting me to skin it...tried once with one tail, but it is quite a feat to skin abeawertail?