Thanks guys! Skins and Tru Oil

[Stinger]

I wanted to say thanks for all the help.  You guys provided a lot of great advice as I undertook a project to add a new look to an old bow.  My father originally roughed out this bow and made the limbs for a friend about 35 years ago.  The guy that did the finish work was a hack and the bow was a mess.  I acquired the bow about a year and a half ago.  First thing it needed was to drop 10#.  I built a tiller tree with your advice and then went to town on the limbs hitting my target weight exactly.  Then it was the limb finish.  The bow has nice forest green glass, but the finish looked like a 3 year old did it with finger paint.  Originally I was going to have it dipped, but then decide to do snake skins.  Your advice worked here too.  The green glass underneath makes the skins a little darker than a lot that you see, but works great for this bow.  Next was the riser.  It is an I-beam construction of hard maple and had big holes in the front where a sight had been.  Some great advice on using analine dye from Jess Stuart helped immensely here to get the color and effect I was looking for and he provided a bubinga scrap to cover the holes.  A feather rest from Trap finished her off.

This isn't as nice as most of the work I see you guys do from scratch, but it was a lot of fun resurrecting a bow my father made.  I have included a number of photos here to show what it looked like after just the Tru oil finish.  It really pops, but this is to be a hunting bow, so a light 0000# steel wool and 2 light coats of spray satin poly knocked the glare down and makes it usable in the woods.

Thanks again all for the great advice!

With Tru Oil:
 

 

Finished with satin top coat:
 

 

 

...and she shoots good too!
 

[DVSHUNTER]

looks very nice. Probably feels good to have it back too. Congrats.

[SEMO_HUNTER]

Looks nice Stinger, I'm a big fan of Tru Oil myself. That's what I used on my BBO that got skinned just recently. I put about 6-7 coats on it.....I actually lost count, but I kept layering the coats until I couldn't feel the texture of the skins anymore.

I'm going to refinish an old Pearson longbow that was my grandfather's and seriously thinking about skinning it too? The handle is delaminating but the limbs seem fine. I'd like to refinish the entire bow, re-glue the handle, and skin it. I think my grandfather would approve. I'm curious to see how it shoots, but it has to be fixed first.

I imagine your father is very proud of what you did.  

[red hill]

Bow looks great, Stringer. Skins add so much to a bow. Good luck with this fall.
Stan