Im in the process of if you shall say, putting lipstick on a pig. I recently picked up a used longbow that i had no clue anything about other than it was 68" 55# and D shaped. After receiving it and doing some research i found that its a sas pioneer, $189 new so i wasnt expecting much out of it. My initial thoughts were it was extremely slow which i later found was my perception tricking me as this thing is eerily quiet. There is now twang or thump at the shot, just a very muffled puff sound from tge string. Now i will say for $189 you dont get anything fancy, its some odd ball woods with black glass, matching plain brown wood nock overlays, a flat finish and a pseudo leather grip. Im going fix it up so its a little easier on the eyes and hopefully make it a bit better shooter. First thing on my list i did tonight was ditch the cheap recliner cover "leather" with some real leather. I dampened the leather after cutting close to size and wrapped it in a compression bandage and let sit last night to take shape of the grip. This evening i unwrapped it to find to my surprise it actually took the shape of the handle (ive never done a leather bow grip) and punched holes to lace it up. I loosely laced it up with some artificial sinew and slid it into place before working each lap of sticking tight. I must say i am very pleased with how it looks and it feels like a night and day difference. Next up will be a new string and silencers.
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Excellent work on that wrap! Look forward to some shooting reports after ya get the new string on. :clapper: :thumbsup:
That looks great ! Nice job :thumbsup:
the grip was my second attempt at anything with leather. Last year while i was learning to walk again i made this armguard.
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What happened, you mentioned learning to walk again?
Man I'm jealous of your stitching. Nice work
Very nice..
Nice job on the grip. Those nickels are a unique touch on the guard. :thumbsup:
Great job on the grip......... :thumbsup:
Quote from: acedoc on June 30, 2018, 07:11:09 AM
What happened, you mentioned learning to walk again?
I had a incident with a lawnmower. I hopped off to pick some stuff up out of the yard and while i was in front of it the drive and belt engaged. When i turned around it hit me and went up over my leg. The blade severed the main tendon going from my kneecap down and cut through my kneecap itself
The buffalo head nickle buttons came from joanns fabric, they are i believe pewter
Yikes! That sounds horrible. Great job on the grip, that's how I've been doing them for years.
Tough luck , great that you are pushing through recovery
Recovery has been pretty decent, i shot cloverdale last year 2 days after the removal of my staples i was still in the full length leg brace. Besides work, shooting is where i get my exercise. Thanks everyone on the grip, it was a lot easier than i expected and i think turned out pretty nice and its very comfortable. The leather was from a bag of scraps i got from hobby lobby
Nice job on both!! :thumbsup:
Nice job!
Well with the recent realization that i wont be able to order a new custom for a good while project lupstick on a pig is back on the table. Since it has reinforced tips i decided tonight to twist up a fast flight skinny string with b50 padded loops to try out on it. String looks great, now to see how it compares to the regular diameter dacron string.
Those bows are better behaved with a fast flight string, and deer cannot tell 10 fps, if it works for you, keep it. I have corrected the tiller on one, a bit and glass sanding and limb rounding and nock correction is all it took, with some new finish and a string from Chad at Champion Bow Strings, it shot great and was impossible to tell the guy only paid $60 for it. I hope he shares his deer meat with me.
Its not a bad shooter at all. It has a decent amount of back set and is fairly zippy. Really my only problem is that the draw weight is too heavy
You can take off 5 pounds just by rounding the corners and another couple by rounding the belly corners a little more and a couple more by taking down the belly glass. Count your strokes and keeping checking alignment and brace differences, from the fadeouts, and mid limb. At specific points, I use a mark on the string to remain consistent.
Ill have to give that a try. Would you recommend a sanding block and say 200 grit or finer
I like the 80 grit to start, remember do not sand into the fiberglass, sand along and away from the glue line. A good work bench and padded clamp makes the sanding strokes more equal and efficient. I count the strokes. This will mess up your nice handle work, are you sure you want to do that? I suppose you can wrap and tape off that portion. I use super fine sand paper on guitars, I have to do a patch on my concert guitar neck, the guitar body is french polish but the neck is a fancy lacquer, I can fine sand that stuff to 1000 grit and it will stick. For bow limbs 500 grit is fine enough. I do better with moderate pressure with cutting sandpaper than doing more and harder strokes with lighter sand paper. If you are just going after the corners and are worried about going too deep you can start with the less aggressive grit, like 100 and then go 200 and finish with 320 or so. Careful to leave a good lip for your bow string loops.
The good thing about the leather handle is i never used glue on it just form fit and artificial sinew to hold it together just in case it didnt work. So if i do decide to refinish the bow i can just cut the stitch and remove the grip and when i put it back on i can properly attach the handle. The bow itself wouldnt be too bad if the actual draw weight was what it was marked but its coming out around 60-61#@28" instead of the marked 55#
Thought I would share
Thats about right lol. I traded a bolt on kwicky quiver this morning to one of my co workers for a thunderhorn boa strap style quiver. Ive still got to gwt it all adjusted just right but now the pig has a quiver. I may see what leather i have laying around and stitch up a cover for the plastic hood.
Looks great bro!!
Well ol pig is comin along. Still need to do the center serving on the string and add some yarn puffs as well as adjust the quiver so it fits properly. Shes starting to look like a half way decent bow, now i just need to work up to the draw weight
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Like pavan says, you can remove a few pounds from that bow easily. In addition to removing g weight, rounding off the limb edges will make the bow look nicer and make the edges less likely to get dinged up.
Quickest easiest way I've found to refinish a bow (for someone without a spray gun) is Varathane water-based Spar Polyurethane satin spray. I get it at Menard's. Use the satin, not semi-gloss or gloss. I can do a bow in an hour or less, putting on 5-6 coats. I've done at least 10 bows with this stuff, and all turned out great.