My shop teacher has alot of acrylic plastic strips of varying thicknesses, 1/16" up to 1 1/2". Would it be usable as a substitute for phenolic in risers and limb tips? It may be too weak, but I don't have much experience with phenolic so I don't know. It IS heavy though.
I don't have a clue.
Maybe take a 1/8 inch thick piece and sandwich it between a couple of 1/16 inch pieces of hardwood and glue it up.
Then put it in a vise and put something like a,pipe wrench on it and see what,it takes to,break it.
This would test the glue and the acrylic.
No way acrylic can work in my opinion.
The young's modulus of workshop acrylic is too low to be a good reinforcing material. I'm a new bowyer too, but I've worked with enough acrylic to know that. I'd choose to err on the safe side as stick with phenolic.
Thanks, I don't know much about plastics.
Acrylic has no other material as reinforcement. Phenolic has some sort of material, whether it be paper, linen, fiberglass, carbon fiber, etc. laminated in a resin binder. Also, acrylic is bonded with an adhesive that fuses the plastic. I doubt it work work with wood. I'm sure you could mount it to wood with epoxy or something, but it would not be structural.
I think it's be hard for epoxy to bite on acrylic. Besides, if you have to rough up wood, which is highly textured, to allow epoxy to bite properly, expect to rough up acrylic even more.
And I'm very damn sure acrylic looks anything but nice when roughed up.