Making Laminations for Fiberglass Bows?

[StanM]

We're about to kick off Archery class again at my school and in an effort to reduce the cost of bows for my students I've been thinking about trying to do the laminations myself.

I have a table saw, a bandsaw, a bench top drill press, and Delta belt/disc sander combo (small bench top version).

I've done a search for ways to make lams and don't see much in the way of pictures.  Does anyone have some suggestions they can throw at me, perferably with some pictures?  Thanks in advance.

Stan

[Off the Mark]

http://www.geocities.com/salampsio/glass3.htm

[razorsharptokill]

There is some really good info there, Thanks.

[bvalentine002]

If you need parallel laminations (I don't use tapers on the longbows I make), a power bench plane works great.

I use a friend's 12" Husky. Not sure what it costs, but I bet they are less than $200

If you can save your kids $5 per bow in laminations, it'll only take 40 bows to recover your costs.
-Brett

[Dan Bonner]

I grind mine on a 1 horse power 6X48" belt sander that i bought from Harbor Freight for $160. It has a frame around the platen where i drilled and tapped a 1/4 x28 fine thread hole on either side of the belt. I  put two hex screws through a 2X 6X 1/8" piece of channel iron and I use pieces of glass with known thicknesses as feeler guages to set the thickness I want to grind to. I then push the lams that I cut on my table saw from bamboo flooring through between the belt and the channel iron backwards and pull them at a measured even pace through the sander. you will feel the sander "bight" more on the high places and less in the low spots. I can take off .001-.010 per pass. usually takes about .008-.010 to remove tool marks from the table saw. I can grind tapers by pushing a paralell through with a store bought taper on the channel iron side. it takes a while if you are doing multiple lams and you have to be careful not to skin up your fingers but my lams are accurate to within half a thousandths now that i have done a bunch (thats better than Binghams). You will also want to invest in a digital micrometer from Harbor Freight for $14.99

[StanM]

Thanks to all for the replies.  Looks like I'll be tinkering this weekend.

Stan

[twisted]

Hey Stan i have made what i call a poor mans taper jig but if u want to one that will a better job heres a link  to a guys site that has a buildalong for a better jig then i made lol
 http://www.v-archery.nl/  

He makes some sweet looking bow to lol

[recurvericky]

I check the site  http://www.v-archery.nl/  but was not able to see the taper jig can you post the exact web page and point out the jig?

[recurvericky]

Off The Mark, I really like the build along, but I have one question. What are the measurements for the pivet points for the jig to cut the raduis in the riser?

[V-Archer]

Ricky,
I constructed the form using a drawing program. After cutting out the form I just made the radius for the riser such that it matches the curve of the deflex.
Here are the two taper jigs that I use for my lams.

V-Archer

This one I use for lams up to ~35"
 

This one for lams up to ~72"

 

After that I check the tiller of each lam with my pre-tiller jig as shown below.