Hello all,

I have been working on this one for a while now and took quite a few pics on the way....so here comes a build along.  

I have always wanted a greybark black widow recurve, and although I am sure they are worth every penny...I thought it would be great to try to save some money and build one that looks similar to it. So this is my most costly bow to date...but I think it really turned out well.  

To start I took a blcok of grey coreflex superaction and laminated alternating red and white glass stips in the riser.

Here are the lams.  Grey corflex superaction tapered lam, parallel lam, .030 white glass in between and then front and back .040 clear glass.

Glued up ready to come out of the form

If you can see in that above pic, the lams slid a little in the form so getting this tillered took a little more time.  What I did was drew lines every ince all the way down both sides, measured from center.  I then measured the thickness on each limb all the way down and sandeed to get them close (bottom slightly stronger/wider).  

Glue on the overlays.  I laminated a piece of glass in those as well.  

Ready to cut the shelf

On the tip overlays, I used red glass, coreflex S/A wood and then white glass

After a great deal of sanding

Coreflex superaction wood is an amazing product

with mineral spirits to check my finish sanding

Better make a string

For the finish, I am using Thunderbird epoxy.  The first coat I put on heavy with a brush to seal the grain.  I let it dry 12 hours then sanded it out.  It worked great.  The remaining pics only have this one sealer coat on it...I still have to spray the remaining two coats. But as you can see...it sands great and produced a smooth finish even on coat #1.  I have tried many other finishes (poly, tru-oil, Magnalac) and this is by far my favorite.  

 

Braced...I still need to kick that brace height up a bit...in this pic it is at about 6

very cool...thanx!

And drawn.  I came across some Black Widow string silencers as well.

It came out a bit underweight...53# @ 28.  I am making some dyed grey arrows to match and plan to hunt with this soon.