It's been an interesting 4 weeks. In early Jan I was riding at the indoor bicycle track. Going into turn 3 tempo lap (~27 mph) another rider crashed in front of me. he slide down the track and took me out. I ended up in the hospital and in surgery the next day. Five broken bones and a partially collapsed lung. The broken ribs hurt the most, well, it all hurt really
Here is my new hardware.
http://i1193.photobucket.com/albums/aa343/Philip_Mazza/Archery/after.jpg After 2 weeks at home I was able to start moving about. I was bored and tied of sitting, so I decided to see what I could get done in the shop. I was able to get a thickness sander fashioned out of my drill press. You can't see it from the picture, but under the drum is a bearing from a bicycle hub under there. It helps to keep the drum square as I run the lams through it.
http://i1193.photobucket.com/albums/aa343/Philip_Mazza/Archery/drillpressthicknesssander.jpg Project two was to learn why my band saw sucked at cutting thin rips. I checked everything square and adjusted the guides. It still sucked, so off to the internet I went, I learned about blade drift. Yep, that was it. Turns out that my 1/4 inch blade cuts at about 3 degrees. I made an extend-o fence and use a wedge to get it set to the correct angle. I am now getting much straighter cuts with fewer teeth marks left behind on the lams.
http://i1193.photobucket.com/albums/aa343/Philip_Mazza/Archery/bandsawfence.jpg Project 3...A hot box. An 8 foot long box that's about 11"x11". I used 1 inch thick foam insulation board. The ends of the box are left open. I am using two portable 500 watt halogen work lights for the heat source. With the lights all the way into the box, it gets above 200 degrees. You adjust the temperature by sliding the lights closer or further from the ends of the box. No pics of this, its just a long shiny box.
And this brings me to my first try at a reflex/deflex bow. I'm calling it the rehab bow. I made it from two layers of hickory and some walnut for the riser. I was WAY off on the thickness of the lams, but I learned a lot making it. It was my first time using a two part epoxy and the oven. I missed my draw weight by a ton. It came out to about 8 pounds at 26 inches. Of course, that is about all I could pull at the time anyway.
I roughed in the handle and shoot it a bit. The r/d design does pretty good. The tillering is off a little, you can see the bottom limb is bending closer to the handle. Haven't finished it. I'm trying to decide if I should add another layer to the back, or just let it be what it is and start my next bow.
http://i1193.photobucket.com/albums/aa343/Philip_Mazza/Archery/rehabBow01.jpg http://i1193.photobucket.com/albums/aa343/Philip_Mazza/Archery/rehabBow02.jpg http://i1193.photobucket.com/albums/aa343/Philip_Mazza/Archery/rehabBow_fulldraw.jpg Over all though, I am happy. Four weeks out of a bad crash, I'm up, about, back to work, and back to my hobbies. Another 4 weeks should have me back to 100%
Thanks for reading. And for all the reading that TradGang provided while I was recovering. I've learned a ton from the forum. Thanks to All!
Gentleman Archer
Glad your doing alright but NO PICS OVER 640 PIXELS
Topic: An interesting month..and a new bow (Read 434 times)
