Hill style bow build - Finally makes meat!!! - Now a buck!! (pg 4)

[jsweka]

I told my wife the only thing I wanted for Christmas was laminations for a new longbow so back around Thanksgiving I sent Kenny an order.  (Man, Kenny has some quick service and excellent quality!!!)  This bow will be a straight limbed Hill style longbow.  I've always admired the limited edition Sirocco on the Howard Hill website with the black glass on the back and clear glass on the belly over something light in color.  So for this bow I went with black glass for the back and curly maple under clear glass on the belly.

The bow will be 68" and I'm shooting for around 55 - 60 lbs at 28".  Based on previous builds my formula was as follows

0.050 black glass
0.070 actionboo
0.080 actionboo
0.080 actionboo
0.110 curly maple (0.002 taper)
0.050 clear glass

I also went with a cocobolo for the riser.

This past Friday, I headed over to my Dad's place to start building beacuase he has a much nicer workshop than I do and being an avid woodworker has just about any powertool you would ever need for bow building.

Here's a pic of everything laid out ready for glue up.

     


I use smooth-on and the airhose method for gluing up and here's a pic of my laminations in the form and the air hose inflated.
     

Here's a closeup of the riser area in the form.  You can see I screw on a couple pieces of plywood around the fadeouts to keep everything from slipping once the air hose is inflated.

     

I threw it in the hotbox about 8:30 Friday night, set my alarm for 4:30 Saturday morning, woke up, turned off the heat and went back to bed for a couple hours while it cooled.

Here's a pic right off the form.  Lots of glue boogers to clean up.
     


And here it is cleaned up. And a closer view of the riser - gotta love that cocobola
     
     

I like to draw my centerline and profile of the bow on the masking tape over the back glass prior to glue-up.  Everything stayed in place, so I was good to go.  I have had bows in the past slip a little and in these cases, I redraw the centerline and profile.

It was then off to the ocsillating spindle sander to shape the limbs.  I use a spindle sader hooked to a shop vac because it takes material off in a hurry, keeps nasty dust down, and I don't ruin one of my Dad's bandsaw blades.  Once I get the profile close with the spindle sander, I use a belt sander to finish the profile.  The spindle sander is great at getting to the profile quickly, but can leave the edge a little wavy, so the belt sander smoothes it up.

[jsweka]

I then glued on my material for the limb tips - black glass/curly maple/cocobolo.  Since I don't like to mess with smooth-on twice, I used a superglue-like stuff called Kwik It (3 Rivers sells it).  I've had good luck with it in previous bows.

 

Once the tip overlays were set, it was time to do the string grooves.  A while back Marty or Kenny posted a pic of jig they made for indexing the string grooves and I made something similar.  It worked great!!
 

Here's the grooves cut in.
 

Put a string on it to figure out which would be the top and bottom limbs.  One limb was 1/4" weaker than the other, so that one was designated "TOP".

Here's the strung profile at brace height.
 

So now the real fun started - working on the riser.
Here's my shelf cut in.
 

[jsweka]

And here's some rough shaping on the riser and grip area. It's going to have about a 1/8" dish to it.
 

So that was a pretty good amount of work on it for this weekend.  My Steelers are on now, so I'll pick back up on this bow tomorrow night and post some more pics of my progress.

Hope you enjoy...

[Trux Turning]

That cocobola does look nice! Can't wait to see it with some finish-Good job.

[White Oak]

Oh ,thats a very nice piece of coco. Love these builds. Always something to learn. Thanks for takin us along. How did you cut you shelf John?
Ed  

[Jeff Smith]

I'll be watching this one, thanks for sharing.
Jeff

[Bone lake]

Gonna be a nice looking bow.

[jsweka]

Thanks Guys.

Ed - To cut my shelf, I mark a line across the side of the riser where it will be and then use a hacksaw to cut perpendicular to the riser on that line and stop at the depth I want (about 3/16" from center). Then I get out the elbow grease and rasp for the sight window.  The cut with the hack say gives me a nice clean shelf that is tough to get just using a rasp alone.

[Apex Predator]

Looking great so far!

[Ricky Wallace]

I like that jig for string grooves! Why didnt I think of that?? Looks great!

[hova]

thats a nice simple looking build. i like when you glass guys make great bows look so easy.


-hov

[jsweka]

Did some more work on her tonight in my crappy basement/workshop (Dad's shop is so much nicer.)  I shaped the limb tips and did some more shaping on the riser.  I'm pretty much finished shaping things, so now comes the boring part - lots and lots of sanding.  This is where I start to get impatient, but any rough areas or tool marks that don't get sanded out really show up once the finish is applied.

Here's one of the limb tips.
 

And here's a couple pics of the riser.  I just had to take off the masking tape to see what was underneath.
 

 

[razorback]

Looks real good. I like that maple under the clear glass. The clean simple lines of hill style bows are starting to intrigue me. Might have to look into getting my hands on one soon.

[fish n chicks]

That's dead sexy. Can't wait to see her finished. Totally agree on the tooling marks. Gotta eradicate all or it just says novice. Beautiful work.

[kennym]

Lookin real sharp!!        

That nock jig thingy is all Marty!!  

[Dick in Seattle]

Great job!   Love the nock jig... way better than what I came up with and I'm sure one will appear in my shop by the time I get to that point on the next bow.   Congratulations.

[jsweka]

I don't have any new pics to post tonight.  Just did a lot of sanding - 80, 150, 220, and 320 grit.  Figured I set it down, give it a rest, and take a good look tomorrow night to find any blemishes that remain.

[TNstickn]

[jsweka]

Got it all sanded and put on the first coat of finish tonight.  I use Minwax wipe on poly and rub it down with steel wool between coats.  I'll apply 6 - 7 coats.

Not the greatest pic, but here it is.
 

[White Oak]

Beautiful bow John. Man that riser really stands out with that black glass. Very nice work!!!
take care,
Ed