old compound riser into a traditional bow

[dwmccloud]

I have an old compoud bow that has been dismantled because the limbs and cables are no longer safe. I am curious if I created new limbs would it be a safe, reliable take down recurve. Also, I am a woodworker and an archer not a bowyer. I would like to make a self bow and thought this might be a way to get my feet wet.

[macbow]

I have a friend that has made several compound risers into take down recurves.
If you had the old limbs they could help with the angles needed for the base of the limbs.

[Jon in North Idaho]

Absolutely possible. It's called a WARF bow - I'm not sure why we call it that.  Also known as "warfing" a bow...  If you do a search (here or on google) for warf bow, you'll get lots of results.

So all that said, yes it can be done.  You'll need to get it in the hands of a bowyer so they can figure out the best way to attach limbs.  A lot of old compound risers can be retro-fitted with an ILF limb plate, making it so they can accept any ILF limbs.

[LittleBen]

x2 what's been said.

I believe they're calle3d warf bows because one of the guys who was/is big on doing this went by the handle warf or something like that.

Anyway, if you had pictures/information about the particular riser you're talking about that could help alot in terms of getting some advice on a specific approach.

As mentioned, installing ILF plates is one route and will allow you to use ILF limbs. There are some guys out there who make ILF plates for specific risers and you could just install them. If you have the machining capability you can make ILF plates as well.

Also, I believe it is also fairly common to use samick sage limbs. Samick sage limbs use a single attachment bolt, and the riser has little metal tabs that extend outward from the limb pads to align the limbs. You could fabricate something similar on your riser. I also recall seeing that with alot of the older darton MX(?) series risers which used a limb attachment bolt and a rocker for alignment, guys have removed the rocker from the original limbs, and reinstalled onto the sage recurve limbs, and reused the originial limb bolts. Seems to work well from what I've seen.

In short theres alot of ways, get some pictures up and maybe I or someone else can help you develop a reasonable approach that fits your budget/capability/desires.

[dwmccloud]

I hope I did this right here are photos. The bow was an Outers Astro which seems to me sort of like a Darton. Thanks for the help.
 
 DSCF3003[1]  by  dwmccloud , on Flickr
 
 DSCF3001[1]  by  dwmccloud , on Flickr
 
 DSCF3002[1]  by  dwmccloud , on Flickr

[vanillabear?]

[LittleBen]

I would probabyl try and put on some sage limbs. YOu may need to do some shimming to get teh limb pocket angle correct but I would give it a shot. Liike like you will be able to add shiums alongside the limbs to get the limb alignment.

I'd probably start by making a little mounting plate from aluminum to form a flat limb pad. then just shim between the sides of the limb and those flanges on the riser. I think you'll be good man.

[dwmccloud]

Is it practical to make these sage limbs from wood? What wood? what angle should it be?

[macbow]

I think you could make them from wood. You would need to make them pretty long to have enough limb for bending.
Also some good wood, maybe layers of hickory. Will take a lot of experimenting.

[timbermoose]

should work great. i have one, wife bought it from a local shop not knowing what it "acually" was. i still have it but only use it for target and blind waterfowl hunting, i find the riser too heavy to carry around all day in the woods.

 http://tradgang.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=125;t=009373;p=1#000000

[dwmccloud]

Thank you all for the tips. I will do some testing and hopefully post some pics of a final product.

[takefive]

I did the same thing to my old early 80's Darton 45K a couple of years ago.  I had to make a couple of brackets to keep the Sage limbs straight in the limb pockets.  So glad to be able to shoot my old compound as a recurve now.  I'm going to camo paint the limbs one of these days.  I think the limbs cost all of $80.  Good luck on yours!

 

 

[dwmccloud]

thanks takefive, your bow looks great!

[LittleBen]

if only we could make every darton look liek that ...

[takefive]

Thanks, dwmccloud; it's fun to shoot it.  Hope you get yours built soon.  And an amen to that, Ben.       Even if I wanted to shoot a wheel bow (and I don't) Darton no longer makes one long enough to shoot with fingers.  My old 45K was 40" if I remember right and it was one of their shorter models.  I think their top of the line was like 46" long back then.   Glad that my favorite bows these days are in the 66" range, without wheels, and you can actually feel the string.

[LittleBen]

dwmccloud, just was thinking about this ... it sounded like from one of your earlier posts that you missed that the "sage" limbs are from a samick sage takedown bow. Sorry if I missed something.


As for makign them out of wood, honestly I don't recommend it. I've made a couple all wood takedown's and it's not easy by any stretch of the word. If you have to ask if it can be done, then you're probably not ready to do it.

So far I've had 3 all wood takedowns survive. The first was all red oak, 62" long with a 12" riser, which took massive set, looks liek crap, and is basically a wall hanger to remind me to be patient on my finish work. It's maybe 30# @ 25".

The second is a 64" recurve, 14" riser limbs are hickory back, maple core, and jatoba belly with hickory wedge, riser is maple and jatoba. It's pretty nice, but it took 3 iterations of the limbs to get it right. It's about 40#@25".

The last was a 68" R/D longbow, 14" riser, limbs were hickory back, shedua core, jatoba belly, with hickory wedges. Riser was maple and shedua. This was a very nice shooting bow, didn't take too much set. Not the fastest thing on the planet, but probably longer than I needed. This bow was right around 50# @ 27".

So long story short, yes it can be done with all wood, but this has literally been a saga for me going on two years now to get the formula right, and I still have some ground to cover.

These are not short bows, and they have very short risers. Theres alot of limb there. My guess is on that riser (which is probably 19-21") you're going to NEED a 68" or longer bow if you make wood limbs.

Also since the limb pads are deflexed, you're going to need to make some kind of recurve or extreme R/D limb profile. Honestly I think you're biting off too much in one shot.

Drop the $80 and buy the samick sage limbs, they'll serve you well. And frankly, unless you have alot of tools and scrap wood, it's gonna cost you $80 and take 100 hours of work to get those wood limbs together without any remote guarantee of success.