man..the level of talent on the Bowyers Bench..Eric..that is awesome

Like open heart surgery for a bow!

A little more progress. The short string stresses the limbs differently than the long string so a check with my gizmo reveled a few more stiff spots.

 

A little scraping and I was ready for full brace height. The bow is 65#@25" so I gave it a test run and shot about 50 arrows with it. Not bad but I still have to get rid of a lot of poundage. That is the good thing about using a tillering gizmo, your wood removal is so precise you end up over poundage most of the time.

 

I like to do my final tillering with a cheap $13 palm sander. It goes slow with 120 grit paper and takes out all the washboard effect belly scraping causes. This sander takes 1/4 sheet clamp on pads which are a pain to put on this cheap sander so I use 1/4 sheet stick on pads. When I want to change out the pad I heat it with my heat gun and it peels off easily.

 

Probably putting the cart before the horse but I did a little dye testing on the bamboo. I have always removed the rind in the past which may be the cause of this failure. I might have nicked the bamboo and not known it.

This time I am leaving the rind intact so I tested the best way to have it take stain. My BBOs have a distinctive dye pattern and I like to keep making them look like I have in the past.

The middle test has had the bamboo rind very lightly sanded and buffed with a scotch bright pad before being dyed with Feibings med brown. The one one the right has just been buffed with a scotch bright pad, didn't take stain well. The one on the left has had the same treatment as the middle one but I used a different brand of brown leather dye which always turns green on bamboo. I tested it to see what color it would turn on the rind, green as usual.

 

Got a request for a picture of my vise clamp pads. Pretty simple, easy to remove and offers the best protection of any vise pad I have used so far. The leather is glued on the front with Barge cement and glued and tacked on the top.

 

Nice work Eric. That center test spot looks pretty good. I can see the whole back looking that way and I like it! The strung proflie is very sharp! Cant wait to see full draw pics on the tree.

Awesome craftmanship as usual!!!

Good idea for vice pads. I have some soft plastic ones with magnets, the mag's don't hold any more and it is frustrating to have them fall off often. I'm going to make a set like yours. Looks like softwood blocks?

I use blocks like Eric's, made them out of out of Poplar, very soft wood and doesn't hurt a thing. Use two gum bands to hold the blocks tight to the jaws of the vice. Eric always does nice work.

Shaun, I like 3/4" plywood the best for pads but a friend was admiring my pads in the shop one day so I gave him the plywood ones and made these out of a poplar board I had in the corner.

I never broken the plywood ones but have broken the poplar ones legs a couple of times while I was really putting the pressure on straightening a stave. I glue them back together and keep using them. You can see one glue repair behind the ruler in the picture.

So is the repair along completed or is there more to come?

Thanks Eric. This very interesting to me. I have done the same thing way back, but not nearly as professional as you. Excellent post.

Thanks for sharing, you made it look easy.

Lots more to go on the repair but I may not get to do much more for a few days.

Today I am unloading all my hunting gear from my truck that I started accumulating last September as well as getting the camper ready to pull to the Prespring Arrow Fling at Tannehill park on Friday.

Whooo Hoooo!!!! See you there!!

Here we go again, back from the spring fling.

The bow was 15# too heavy so I scraped and checked with my gizmo all morning, hit the desired 62#@30" just right.

Here is 15# worth of shavings.

 

After I was satisfied with the bows poundage I began the finish process.

The first step was to sand the rind lightly.

 

I sanded the nocks with a piece of sand paper wrapped around my chainsaw file.

 

I like my bamboo edges and the back to be the same color so I put a coat of tru-oil on the sides of the bamboo so the open grain wouldn't absorb more stain than the back.

 

I stained the back with leather dye, hated the way it came out, way too streaky.

 

Sanded it off a good bit deeper through the rind than the first time, just a little bit of rind left.

 

Looking good Eric, very nice.

I started re-staining the limbs. I use this leather dye.



I like to put it on in layers quickly so I make a swipe with my dye soaked rag and follow up with my heat gun to dry the stain quickly for the next pass.



I like the final result which I will fade out between the nodes to achieve my "signature" dye job. The new stain is on the left, old streaky one on the right.

Walt said he had been coating the backs of his bamboo backed bows with super glue in hopes of keeping splinters from popping up. Sounds like a good plan so I did the same, wiped it on with a small piece of rag. I really soaked the nodes with glue as well.