Take down Longbow - Build along

[rmorris]

Hello everyone I am working on a new longbow design and I am going to attempt a build along while I make the first bow. If anyone has any questions or if a skip anything please speak up.

 -This picture is of the wood I will be making the riser out of (dalmatian wood, jatoba, and Bolivian rosewood)
     

-Here is the wood cut to size to work in my jigs.
     

-This is what the wood looks like what it comes out of the jigs.
     

-This next jig is how I cut the angles on my riser the same everytime.This jig fits into my miter slot on the table saw and works great.
     

- This is the jig that cuts the wedges for my take down bows. This jig is nice because I can take any piece of wood that is 1.5" x 1" and at least 10" long and cut quick nice wedges.
     
     

-This is what that wedges look like just after the cut with the saw. I will do a little sanding later to get them perfect.
     

-This is the final picture I have for the night. I added in 2 thin strips of maple and a layer of black fiberglass between each part that I glued up, and yes i do know the back insert is not in straight ( you will see why later).
     

Hopefully Sunday after church I will be able to do some more work on this bow and get some more pictures posted.

   We love buikld alongs and this looks like it's gonna be great but no pics over 640 pixels please

Sorry about how large the pictures are, I think I have that fixed now.

[jtwalsh62]

very nice jigs you got there I am a jig person too

[oneraindog]

what are other ways to do it besides jigs?
where do you get them?

i am very curious about lamination bows but know nothing
i may be asking a lot of newbie questions please have patience  

[rmorris]

Oneraindog, you can do any of the things you see here by hand but jigs will help do things faster and you will get a more constant product. All of the jigs I use I make myself out of corrian(the counter top material)and this stuff is easy to tap and drill and also cuts well with woodworking tools. More important is that feel free to ask any question and someone will get a reply  to you.

[rmorris]

So I did not get as far as I wanted today but I am going to try to hit it hard on Monday, but here is what I did get done today.
-This first picture is of the riser with most of the glue cleaned up.
 

-Here is somewhat what I would like the final product to look like, lets see how well I can cut on the lines.
 

- The last thing I did today was glue on some scrap wood for a thumb rest, I have never put a thumb rest on a bow before. Since this is a new bow design for me I will try something new.
 

[Shaun]

Oooops Ralph! Pics too big again.

What I do is set photobucket default upload to 600 and then you don't have to remember to resize each time.

Keep the build along coming, likin' it.

[Trux Turning]

Love these build alongs!! Looking good.

[rmorris]

Ok, I think I now have all my pictures the correct size. Shaun, thanks for he advice on uploading to Photobucket at a default size looks like it worked.

[red hill]

I love these build-alongs, too. Can learn a lot by following along.
Good job, Ralph.
 

[Whitetail Chaser]

looks good so far.

Brett

[rmorris]

Got a good amount done today but it will more than likely be sometime after school on Tuesday before I get any of it posted. Thanks to everyone who is keeping up with the build along and hope you enjoy.

[rmorris]

Alright I am back to posting and here is where I am at so far.
-This is how I drill the holes in the riser. It is a jig from bingham. I did have to grind down the sides of the jig and re-scribe some correct center lines because it was off about .030. I currently have a local machine shop making me a new jig with drill bushings for durability and 2 dowel pins instead of the one. I recommend that you use a drill press to make sure you get a perfect hole (the x-y table is also nice if you have one).
 

- Next is just taping the holes for the double threaded insert and the nice bolt I use the screw in the insert. I also put some glue in the hole to make sure it stays.
 
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Now that you have a grasp on how I make the riser I will be moving on to making the limbs.
-These sets of pictures show the steps of turning bamboo flooring into parallels and tapers for the limb.
- I start off with the boards and run them on the planer to get the finish off the top and the marks off the bottom. I then cut them on the table saw to 1.5" wide.(I can get two 1.5" boards out of the original)
 
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[rmorris]

-Now that I have the boards down to 1.5" wide I pull out another jig I made to cut laminations.
This jig is adjustable and I can very accurately cut laminations from .130 all the way down to .050 The biggest waste I get on the step is the width of the table saw blade, so I use a smaller 7.5" blade( for circular saws) and a zero clearance insert on my 10" table saw. A good blade will only cost you about $13 and is well worth it. Please notice that this jig has some small blade guards and also keeps the thin pieces of bamboo from jumping around.
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- Here is the final product.
 
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[rmorris]

- Now that all the laminations are cut I need to get them to the correct size. For this bow I will be using a top layer of .050 black glass, a paralell that is .090, a thin dark colored veneer ( gives a nice dark stripe in the limb, a .002 taper, and another layer of .050 black glass.
- For the parells I use a pre squared board of maple and set the height of the planer and and run the laminations.
 
-For the tapers I have taper block I made and double stick tape the bamboo the the block and run it, the bamboo then comes out tapered.
 

[rmorris]

After everything is cut and ready to glue up I tape off a clean area and clean everthing that is about to be glued with 91% alchoal.
-This picture shows everything before I start to apply the glue ( I chose to put in a 9" reverse taper at the tips at the last min.)
 

-The next thing I do is do a dry run and make sure there is no gaps or problems and then I prep my form so that glue will not get on it. Once I feel everything is good I use EA-40 epoxy and a 1.5" puddy blade to spread the epoxy on all parts of the limb.
 
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- After everything has a thin layer of epoxy on it I then place it in the form and use the air hose method to compress everything to the form.
 

-I have pre heated my oven so that all I have to do is place my form in the oven and put my thermometer inside a hole I drilled in the form. The thermometer I use is a digital readout for a BBQ grill so that I can read the temp of the limb without opening the oven. After the form tempature reaches 180 I turn off the oven and let it cure for 2 more hours.
 

[rmorris]

Here is a link to a video on cutting the bamboo into the thin strips.

 

[SEMO_HUNTER]

I like the video Ralph, now you got me thinking that I could save some elbow work by using the table saw to thin my boo down, rather than eating up sanding belts. I've got the same table saw in my garage as yours.

Would this work if a guy wanted to leave the nodes (rounded edge) on one side and trim the excess off the flat side? I guess I'd have to make a rounded jig of some sort?
Any ideas?

Thanks for sharing.

[red hill]

Great build-along, Ralph. How 'bout a close-up of the boo after it was cut? I've read where bamboo flooring is used but Haven't actually seen any of this product.
Impressive website, tood
Stan

[rmorris]

Chris, I know very little about the bamboo backed bows but I have seen the pictures with the natural bamboo showing and that alwys looks good. I am going to assume that when you buy it there is a flat smooth back side and the side with the "nodes".If this is correct how that table saw jig is set up all sides of the cut come out clean and you could try taking off a small amount of the side with the fence leaving the node side good. It may be worth a try.

[rmorris]

Stan, I will get some pictures up asap of the bamboo wood flooring. I use the vertical stacked bamboo and each vertical piece is about 1/4" wide it looks a little like a very wide bamboo colored actionwood.One box of flooring costs about $65 at lumber liquidators. Each bow has about 32 boards and each board with no screw ups will make 2 bows (two bamboo laminations in each limb. So, if you can do it with now screw ups you can get the limb wood for each bow at about $1 and you can hardly beat that.