I realized somewhere in here I lined up the limbs with a weighted string, marked the limb tips so the string crossed the center of the riser, laid out the limbs and used an old band saw blade and a fresh belt on the sander to rough out the limbs. And yes....can't find any photos of that!
Time to glue some overlays over the holes in the limb butts and on the front of the riser as well. First thing is don't throw anything away. When you cut the angle for the limb pads, you end up with 6-7" wedges of riser wood - walnut here. A little magic with the band saw:
and here:
and you have some overlays. Set up a sanding drum on your $33 drill press from Harbor Freight, clamp a piece of wood for a fence, and sand your overlays smooth.
Slice up the wedges into overlays, keep the leftover glass from the limbs and any little chunks of phenolic, and you can do all sorts of stuff.
I shaped some walnut for the limb overlays - made it angled for an "artistic" touch. Now I planned to make my limb bolts like on my ChekMate bows instead of using beveled washers. Just like the look...and gotta be different. So epoxied on the walnut followed by partially shaped chunks of phenolic:
While this was curing, I sanded the front of the riser to a smooth arc then epoxied/clamped an overlay of limb black glass and walnut to the front. Meanwhile I had traced the shape of the riser and limbs and started playing with a pencil deciding on shape. I wanted a good locator grip for shooting consistency yet try and keep a little smooth longbow shape to the riser - not too big, dramatic or bold like some recurve riser. Settled on a shape and band sawed it once the overlays had cured. Also drilled out the limb bolt holes and used a countersink to match the limbbolt diameter. I found that I had to play with the countersink as the angle on the bolt doesn't match the countersink...strange!
Here's the roughed out product!
Looking good!
Topic: El Cheapo TD Longbow Build Along - Finished!!! (Read 2108 times)
