Lightening Limbs

[Sprint8b]

I have a pair of Zipper takedown limbs from a 18" riser, 62#@28".  I would like to use them on my 16" riser, but they are way to heavy.  Is there a way to lighten them up?
Bobby

[ethan]

It's pretty hard to take weight off of a recurve.  Outside of sanding the glass your kind of limited.  Even with sanding the glass you'll more than likely only take off a few pounds.  At least to my knowledge.

[machomanandysavage]

I was looking at my Bingham's catalog and they have a draw weight chart based on the thickness of the lamination stack. It appears on their design recurve reducing the limb thickness by .006" will yield a 5lb decrease in draw weight, .005" is 5lb on the longbows, so I'm guessing this will give you a ballpark on how much you can take off to get the poundage down to where you want it. You could also trap the limbs (lots of info on the search) to reduce the poundage by a couple # also.

I'm sure someone on here with more knowledge might know some other ways. Whatever you do go slow, measure often, and make sure you take even amounts off both surfaces so you don't change your tiller.

[scottm]

Id ask zipper.They may do it for a nominal fee.

[strungstick]

How much is "way to heavy".  It doesn't take much reduction in thickness on a recurve to drop weight pretty quickly.  It does make a difference how much, if any, glass the bowyer removed when bringing the bow into the initial weight.  Take a caliper and get an idea how much you have to work with.  You can sand each limb (when mounted) to keep everything even and the bow in tiller.  I'm no familiar with the Zipper limb but you can also remove a little by rounding the limb profile.  The key is just check things as you go.