the story first...i got a call during dinner the other night and it was a neighbor. he's buried his truck and needed a pull. we got him out and he gave me permission to hunt his other 2 farms down the road. (yeehaw) anyhow a couple nights ago my wife, my dogs, and i started out on our walk down the road and he pulled up and stopped me. talked for a second and said i got something for you. pulled out this bow and a quiver out of the back of his rig. flashback!! ..i had seen the bow about 14 years ago in a old barn and me and my friend had got our hands on it played for a couple hours and put it back. we never strung it but i had an old aluminum arrow and we just played indians or something. nobody was the smarter of it. never thought of it... well here it is and he hands it to me. then a quiver. and says this was my dads bow he bought this and then a little fiberglass bow for me when i was really really little. i know that nothing was ever killed with it.. maybe you can change that. uh what do i say.. i said i couldn't take it i'm sorry and after 5 minutes or more of denying he won.. well i brought it in and low and behold there is my old bent aluminum arrow in this leather quiver with some other wood arrows with mouse eaten flu flus. well i want to clean it up and such and see if it's shootable and hopefully get him a deer this year. but theres a little split in the riser and one nock is seperating. other than that it seems really solid. its 49# and 60inches. what size string do i need? whjat can i do to fix this bow? (http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z40/wjniemeier/DSC01999.jpg)
(http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z40/wjniemeier/DSC01992.jpg)
(http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z40/wjniemeier/DSC01998.jpg)
(http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z40/wjniemeier/DSC01994.jpg)
First let me say this you may go to a lot of work for nothing. I have refinished/ repaired many bows, I have not examined your bow to assess all the damage, from the pictures this is how I would proceede. I would clean the bow the gently sand the riser. then assess any further problems also remove the remaining grip material, same reason.
The limb tip is a real worry I would attempt to gently open the crack assess how far it is delaminated at that point I would make a new limb tip overlay from hardwood and phenolic sand the front of the limb tip to provide for glue adhesion, using smooth on epoxy work epoxy down into the crack put on the overlay clamp and heat. Then simply reshape the limb tip, this method has worked for me in the past.
You could flood the riser cracks with superglue to fix the wood in place. Then carefully sand and reinish the bow you may want to add a limb tip overlay to the bottom limb for appearence.
Once again you may do this and have the fix let go and you hard work is down the drain :banghead: .
YOU will get other advice on this site, also there are some very good people here that repair bows professionaly this is simply what has worked for me.
Best of luck :coffee:
Do you intend on trying to preserve as much of the current look of the bow as possible? If not then I'd suggest using maybe a horn/antler nock to hold it all together at the tips. Could take some trickery to fit it together though.
I would cut the tips off as short as it took to get rid of the tip problem. Then glue new overlays on and narrow the limbs until I got the weight I wanted. I would not try to repair that tip. Fix the riser like levibear said with CA glue.