Fiberglass Build Along

[Bodork]

This is good. Don't mean to rush you but can you hurry up? Can't wait for more pictures. This is going to be one nice bow. Thanks!

[Bodork]

Good idea about protecting the fades. I've bumped and dropped one or two before and it always seems to land on the thinnest part and chip it for me.

[Crooked Stic]

Yeah good tip on the fade protection.I have also dropped a riser and a T/D wedge.

[swampbiologist]

Pretty work KT and very interesting. Where do you get your handle epoxy from? I just finished building a 1 pc longbow to donate to the Southeastern Deer Study Group Meeting here in Baton Rouge at the end of the month. I'll be building myself another 2 pc. Longbow pretty soon and like how you spliced the handle. Also, what's your proceedure for feathering the fades? Thanks for your efforts to help others.
Emile

[Many Arrows Lost]

The way I understand it West System is used in the manufacturing of fiberglass boat hulls and bath tubs.  It is thin enough to be used as a thick top coat and thinned with acetone, I've put it on arrows. It takes a long time for the thinned stuff to cure so I haven't done that much as I usually need arrows quicker than that.  I get it at the Fuller O'brien paint store and the local hardwood store.

As for feathering the fades I smooth out the arc from the grip to the tip either on a spindle sander or the round end of the belt sander.  I feather the tip by sanding the bottom of the riser on the belt sander.  My longbow is straight through the handle so this is a relatively simple task.

As for dropping risers or bumping fade tips, I tend to pace around the shop and mutter tonelessly for a couple minutes!      :mad:      I've pitched hundreds of dallors worth of exotic sawdust whistling merrily, but busting a riser just does not work for me.

Hopefully I can show some progress by this evening.

Ken

[Many Arrows Lost]

Well I only got 1.5 hours in before supper, so i thought that while I'm on a break I'd report the progress.

First I cut the veneer from the block.

   

Next is to send it through the drum sander a few times and get it down to between .040 and .050.  (I'm working just a little on a hunch here.  Normally my recipe consists of 3 tapers, but since I decided to go with veneer this time,it will have 2 tapers and 2 veneers per limb. I don't have any recipes like this, but this should get me close to my #50 target.)
   
 

Then I laid the bow out a couple different ways.

 

   

I started out thinking about the cocobolo being in the tips but when it was all laid out I chose the upper lay out with the cocobolo coming off the handle.  I think that the darker tips I'm planning will look better at the end of the yew rather than blending with the coco.

   

This is the final layout just before the glue up.  The lamination butts are glued together with superglue unless they are going up the fades and are laid out so that all the upper limb lams are on the right and the lower on the left.  

Here's the way I figure it. I seriously doubt that there is a sander on earth that can grind a perfect surface.  At least I'm not willing to pay for such a machine, so we use the "imperfection" to our advantage.  Thinking about tiller and the shape of the limbs, it would be nice to have limbs that are exactly the same shape and about 1/4" more distance from the string to the bow on the upper limb than on the bottom. (Assuming the lucky winner at the auction shoots split fingered.)  To stack the deck in my favor, I stack the upper limb several thousandths thinner than the bottom limb.  I will cut the limbs to the same measurements and hopefully have very small adjustments to tiller.  Even if you order your lams, you should measure each one and at least know the best layout for your tiller.  You will have to figure out the difference between the limbs that works for your limb design. This bow has .010 difference.  (It's personal rocket science         if you please.)

Hopefully I'll get this in the form tonight, I'll let you know.

Ken

[Luke Vander Vennen]

That thing is going to look incredible.    . Thanks for taking us along.

[Many Arrows Lost]

Alrighty then. It is time to prep for the glue-up.

   

First I clean up the edges of the lams and get all those stringy little splinters removed.  There's nothing that slows down the process more than trying to pick out the splinters and nothing more disappointing than seeing a splinter under the glass when the glue has cured.

   

Then sand the lam splice so no bumps are produced in the back of the handle.  Clean the glass with acetone (there's always quite a lot of real fine glass particals that come off) and you are ready for glue.

   

I use Smooth On and apply it with a blade.  I mix equal parts of A & B measured in small dixie cups.  I am not one to skimp on glue as I think it is better to have a little left over than have a failure.  I like to apply it to lams laying side by side with the blade slanted so that the extra spills over onto the neighboring lam saves time and waste.  With some prior planning you can the just flip the lam over onto its neighbor and coat the dry side and the next lam in the same manner.

Everything is initially held in place on the form with duct tape.

   

The rest of the form is added and the heat tapes adjusted to 150F for one hour.  It has another 15 minutes then I'm off to bed.

   

The shop tip for this post involves superglue.  Thanks to O.L. Adcock we all know where to buy superglue.  Along with the glue comes a fact sheet with a least one thing that I did not know about using superglue.  I'm certain that we all have been fed up with the booger that builds up on the tip of the bottle.  The solution is to take the cap off and throw it away.  By putting the cap on and off impurities are introduced to the tip and we all know what superglue does when it comes into contact with any kind of matter--it dries instantly.  

 

I need color coding so I trimmed the caps so they wouldn't interfere with the tip and returned what was left to the bottle.  More personal rocket science, I guess.

I sure hope this thing turns out.  I'd stay up all night and work on it but my anticipation is trumped by lack of energy as I also replaced the powersteering pump on my wife's minivan today.  Someday I'll have a chat with the folks who engineered that mounting device!

More Later

Ken

[AkDan]

good stuff man!  Can't wait to see it live in person before it goes up for auction!

[Brian Halbleib]

I'd love to hear more about your lam grinding set up...it would make a great article   :D

Great build-a-long!

-Brian
 www.bowyersjournal.com

[SteveD]

Great build a long. Thanks

[Bodork]

Removing the splinters from the edges of the lams before glue up is another good suggestion.  I find bamboo to be the worst about having these splinters.
 I have noticed, however, that when I splice cocobolo next to a light colored wood such as curley maple and use acetone to clean up after sanding the joint the cocobolo tends to bleed onto the maple. I have gone to high air pressure to blow away the dust and haven't had any problems. Mike

[Many Arrows Lost]

Dan, come on over now , ya hear?

Brian, yeah, maybe with lots of pictures I could fill a whole page!        

Mike,  thanks for the reminder about the acetone wash.  Normally when the  limb has only one wood everything gets an acetone bath.  The coco bleeds profusely, so I opted to skip the bath this time and clean the lams by brushing and blowing them off.  Thanks for making the point.

Ken

[Celtic Archer]

Can't wait til I have the time to tackle a bow like this

[clintopher]

I'm really enjoying this.  It's starting to make me wonder if the funds for my next bow would be better spent on supplies to make my own.  About how much is the start up cost?

Clint

[Jumper]

This is turning out very nice!

[AkDan]

Ken,

Taking tomorrow off to take some guys out ice fishing.  Teach an IBEP class monday nite 6-10 and again tuesday nite.  Also going fishing tuesday nite and more then likely taking my mother inlaw out ice fishing again on wensday.  Hopefully you'll still have it then?  

Dan

[TexMex]

   

[Many Arrows Lost]

Well, this is what it looks like right off the form.  I remove as much tape and glue as possible by hand then put it to the belt sander to smooth the edges.  Keep the sides as straight as possible so you can find the center and get the limbs laid out straight.

   

It would be way more efficient to leave the tape on and lay out the limbs but I just have to peek.  The is the blank with the tape removed, the blank appears flawless.

 

Retape the back and lay out the limbs.  I like to hold everything in place with spring clamps.

   

I also point the pencil into the corner of the template and limb so that I am drawing a line right against the template not a pencil tip away.

 

I cut the limbs with the table saw.  Stay out side the lines with the saw and sand to the line with a belt sander or sanding block.

   

Remove the tape starting from the handle to the tip.  If you removed it in the ither direction you can ruin the bow as the fiberglass splinters stick to the tape and will lift from the bowlimb leaving grooves in the glass sometimes several fibers deep.

 

More later

Ken

[Luke Vander Vennen]

awesome