Just thought I'd share a few pics of a bow I managed to salvage. This is a board bow that one of the students was working on at the bow seminar last weekend. I glued it up and Adam was flexing it a few days before the seminar, and the popped off between the belly and the white oak lamination. I cleaned up the joint on the belt sander and reglued it, and all seemed well.
Brent, the student that tillered it out, was shooting it in his back yard after the seminar, and the handle popped off again, this time between the top 2 layers in the handle. I went to his place and picked it up, cleaned up the joint, and tried regluing it, thinking that the glue I had used originally was bad. I braced it, drew back once, and it popped off again. It became clear that it was flexing too much to have a rigid handle.
I didn't want to give up on it and waste the day's worth of work that Brent had put into it, so we had a talk and he agreed to let me try putting a leather riser on it, so that it could flex a bit. I've read about some of you guys doing this, but I've never tried it before. I used some burgundy colored latigo leather that I have - it's pretty thick stuff, around 10 or 12 oz, so I only had to use 3 layers to get the thickness of the original handle. I saturated the leather strips with crazy glue and sandwiched it all up, put some wax paper around it, and then put a piece of 2 x 4 on it with a heavy weight on top.
Then began the long drawn out process of shaping the handle. I would sand it down, apply some black stain (Brent's request - he wanted it to match the black tip overlays), and then apply another layer of glue to soak into the fresh leather on the surface. This hardened the leather on the surface and allowed me to work it almost like wood. The problem I encountered was that in the process of trying to get it nice and smooth, I kept sanding through the glue, which exposed "fuzzies" from the leather below. Then I'd have to stain, glue, and sand again. In my quest for perfection this cycle repeated about 10 times, but I think it was worth the effort because it's smooth as glass now. But the best part is that I've put about 100 arrows through the bow and the handle is still holding. Apparently it just needed to be able to flex a bit.
The seminar wraps up tomorrow, and Brent will get to see it for the first time since the "operation". I hope he likes how it turned out. Even more, I hope that it stays attached for years to come!
