indian archery flatbow repaired and refinished

don s · December 17, 2010, 08:00:00 PM

i decided to repair and refinish my indian archery flatbow. click on the pic and go to my photo bucket. i have 3 albums with before and after pics, as well as pics with the handle off. you can see that the bow is actually two pieces joined by a "z" splice. the handle is stamped "55" as well as penciled with the number. the handle also is dowel pinned together.if you can't access all 3 albums let me know and i'll fix it.looks like maple, would you agree?

don s · December 17, 2010, 10:20:00 PM

this will take you to before pics.

this will take you to pics with the handle off.

Liquid Amber · December 18, 2010, 06:19:00 PM

Looks good.

Better photos of the wood and I'm now pretty sure it's lemonwood. They'd saw out billets from a lemonwood log imported from Cuba and then shaped the bow. Sometimes they backed it, most times they didn't. I have owned several Pearson and Indian bows, both of hickory and lemonwood. I still have an old Highfield ELB of lemonwood.

I'm not sure maple was used in the manufacture of these bows. It was a favored wood for early wood/fiberglass composite bows and still used for that purpose.

don s · December 18, 2010, 07:21:00 PM

thanks LA. i've never seen lemon wood before. i've heard of it. i know it's from cuba and AKA degame. the grain appears similar to maple.
don

KYArcher · December 19, 2010, 08:50:00 PM

Looks good! Nice Job.... KY

don s · December 20, 2010, 12:58:00 AM

thank you. i'm going slow with this bow. i made up a string for it and i strung it with a shallow brace. i'm going to short draw it to excercise the limbs and let it come to the string.
don

dposalski · December 28, 2010, 01:46:00 AM

Don, that looks great. I will do that to my bow as well. Trying to figure out what to do about the logo.

don s · December 28, 2010, 04:35:00 PM

dposalski, i can't help you there. my logo is not a decal. it was coming off, so it was easy to remove and clean up. when i finished with the bow it was simply a matter of regluing it to it's original spot.

dposalski · December 28, 2010, 07:22:00 PM

I dropped a line to the BP factory and they weren't of any help. I know I have seen decals for the Bear bows floating around on here.