Finally I got everything together to start my second attempt in building an r/d-longbow. First I started with glueing up the riser, it's made of teak,yew and walnut. After cutting out the shape with a jigsaw I used a disc sander and band sander for the riser and the fades
(http://i861.photobucket.com/albums/ab173/07Hawaii/DSC00252.jpg)
Sanding the riser
(http://i861.photobucket.com/albums/ab173/07Hawaii/DSC00259.jpg)
The finished riser
Before the glue up I did a dry run to check if the fades of the riser are ok. After reshaping the form a little bit everything is ready to glue up the bow.
(http://i861.photobucket.com/albums/ab173/07Hawaii/DSC00258.jpg)
Glued up and ready
I have used the rubber band method with good results. I noticed that in your picture that it does not appear to have a pressure strip, pad or whatever you want to call it. I always used a pad a little narrower than my lams. to keep the rubber band from applying to much pressure to edges of the lams and causing it to cup or crown the limb.
Lookin good!
What Jess said about the pressure strip,I think Marty uses a strip and another narrow strip for the reasons Jess stated.
Thanks for the suggestion of using a pressure strip. I will see how the glue lines turn out on this one and if I'm not happy with it I know where I can improve on the next one.
After sanding off the excess glue I checked the glue lines. They look good, much better than those of the first bow. At one side of the riser there is a very small gap at the fade but I don't think that I have to worry about that.
(http://i861.photobucket.com/albums/ab173/07Hawaii/DSC00263.jpg)
after cleaning off the excess glue
Looks like it will be a sweet shooter. Fun,ain't it??
It shure is fun...
But yesterday while I was trying to string it up the upper limb cracked and delaminated completely. I'm not sure why this happend but I guess that something was wrong with the epoxy. Maybe I didn't mix it right although I always use a kitchen scale to measure the components to get it right. Perhaps I inhaled to much of the epoxy vapors and made an error at calculating how much hardener and resin I need.
Since this is not the first bow I crack, I know that I will be very pissed for a couple days but after that I'm ready to start the next bow.
What kind of epoxy glue are you using? I use Smooth-On and it never failed on me.
I use Standard L epoxy and I never had issues until now. I have used it for glueing lams, glas and backings and it always worked fine for me. But as I mentioned earlier maybe I have messed up the mixing of the two components. I still have something left so I will give it another try and if it works fine then I'll know that it was me that messed up.