Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => HowTo's and Build-a-longs => Topic started by: boughnut on September 14, 2012, 09:57:29 pm
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any one want a glue up build along? not sure if there has been many posted and I have seen many questions about bamboo backed or hickory backed bows. I will be willing to show the process for your choice of
Bamboo backed osage or hickory
bamboo backed and belly 6 lam
if you are interested let me know and what type I will put it to a vote.
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Id like to seem bamboo planed by hand.
I'd like to try a glue up but no access to power tools.
If thats the way you do it, by all means, show me!
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well I dont normally do it that way but I have in the past before I got some tools. I taper my boo now so it will be different but I will do it. what kind of tools do you have to work with I will match your tools and work a piece down.
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I'd like to see a build along,,,,my problem has been bo planing!!! and belly thickness,,,,,,,,,,,,come to think of it,,,,I'm not good at any of it? JeffW
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ok I will do another tirlam bow and document all steps since some of you guys have hand tools I will do my best to use what I think most people should have in there bow building tool box and no power tools. I think what yall need is a good CALIPER AND MICROMETER SET you can find them online cheap and will save you of all the guess work. I will be using one of them. I will start tonight. Bamboo back Blood wood core hickory belly I am thinking. I might change that combo up a bit. This bow will go to my stepdad when it is done. I have never done a build along so please ask any questions I do not cover and any suggestions you want to add are welcome to. I will try to make it as detailed as posible.
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ok talked with my step dad and I did swithc it up he wants a bamboo backed osage belly with IPe core lam. First off course you need to gather your materials and tools. Pictures below show everything that is needed. Raw bamboo backing, Ipe board, osage board or you could work it out of stave. I have already cut the ipe and osage down to the correct width. Tools, hand plain, wood file, sanding block of some sort, scrapers, Non stretch twine, and make yourself some even thickness wedges. you will need the twine and wedges to press your glue joints together. The short two pieces of wood are brazilian cherry you can use any good hard wood for these to make up the handle area. the long piece will end up at 16 inches long and the short one will end up at 8 to 10 inches long. the long piece goes between the lams and the short goes on the belly.
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Ok the first step to to prepair your bamboo. the first thing I will do is plane the bamboo down narrow enough to be able to cover the whole width with my planer blade. once I get it narrow enough I will plane the belly side of the boo flat. I will add an update once i get to that point. oh and keep in mind when the planer hits the node areas it will want to chip rather than take a nice shaving off you can skip over it a bit only taking minimal wood off from it and even it out with the rest of the boo using your sanding block.
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Thanks for showing us the build.
More often then not people a using stuff I dont own.
Including a nice tidy shop!
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well have not seemed to have gotten as much interest as I hoped to from all the questions about these types of bows I have seen but if I can help answer some questions for even one person I guess I am doing my part to give back to the PA community. anyway I am going to show you a very neat trick with the bamboo tonight so without power tools you can have it precisely tapered. IT has been over a year since I worked one of these bows down with all hand tools so we will see if I still have what it takes lol, Just be prepared for lots of work and have patience if you try one your self this way. A heat box is also good to have I will be using one but really you do not have to as long as you do not heat treat your glue.
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I'm definitely interested to see how you do it. I've got my own approach, but I kinda made it up on my own, and it's far from ideal.
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i been wondering about a bow like this as well, would love to see a build along
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ok so last night I finished up narrowing the bamboo down to roughly 1.5 inches. it is not perfect and does not need to be at this point. Tonight I ran my plane down the belly side untill it was flat yet again it is not perfect and does not need to be at this point slightly thicker in some spots than others. I have it in the heat box now. the reason for the heat box is to temper the boo this also swells the belly in turn taking some of the crown off back making the bamboo flatter. this is not 100% necessary but does help if you are going to heat once glued to heat cure the glue. If you do not temper the boo first and heat cure the glue the boo will swell and your glue joint will fail. when it is done tempering I will show in more detail what I mean. I like to temper my boo between 180 and 200 degrees for 3 to 4 hours. my heat box will reach 300 degrees with all 4 lights running and roughly 180 with just two. I use the 300 degrees for other stuff. and if any one is wondering no 300 degrees is not a danger of fire (if you are careful with what you put in there) it does melt plastic. Paper does not even combust until it hits a little over 400 degrees. Once the boo is done tempuring and has slowly cooled I will re flatten the belly.
Oh very import and forgot to mention this bow is going to be roughly 45 pounds at 28 inches and 66 inches over all length so I have already cut the boo down to 66.5 inches leaving a little wiggle room for the glue up. It will be a deep D/R with hopefully above average speed for its poundage and a 2 to 3 inch finished out back set. This is for hunting so no need to get to much back set in there as I want her to survive the riggers of practice shooting and hunting in the field for years and years.
If you notice my plane blade was set to cut to deep at first I had to take it out and sharpen it after last night she was a bit dul did I mention I have not use it in a long time :o any way got her adjusted and you can tell big difference between the sizes of the big and little shavings. You want to make sure to go slow and only remove little bits as a time. I did not do a very good job at sharpening the blade as the shavings kept breaking over and aver only about 1/2" long each. but it got the job done. so now I wait for it to temper.
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I'm going to be watching...thanks!
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boy oh boy let me tell ya now if you have room for a small table top belt sander and can afford it it will sure save you lots of work I forgot just how much work this is with all hand tools I spoiled my self with all my power tools. this will bring back some memories from the past of building these in my living room as a bachelor with all hand tools before I had a shop and more tools than I know what to do with. but non the less will be fun. If you have a wife or girlfriend that lives with you I suggest not doing this in the house haha man those where the days bows buds and beers.
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I am watching this build a-long closely. The site never ceases to amaze me. I get an idea in mind for a project and within a couple weeks someone does a build a-long or post to answer me questions. This happens about 85% of the time.
I have a piece of DKnight bamboo and a belly split of an osage stave that I've been thinking should come together for a R/D bow, with a hickory power lam.
I've alread learned a bunch. Tempering bamboo--I'd never thought of that. Keep it coming.
Oh, I'll be using a belt sander, so if you can throw in any advice there, I'd appreciate it.
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I am watching this build a-long closely. The site never ceases to amaze me. I get an idea in mind for a project and within a couple weeks someone does a build a-long or post to answer me questions. This happens about 85% of the time.
I have a piece of DKnight bamboo and a belly split of an osage stave that I've been thinking should come together for a R/D bow, with a hickory power lam.
I've alread learned a bunch. Tempering bamboo--I'd never thought of that. Keep it coming.
Oh, I'll be using a belt sander, so if you can throw in any advice there, I'd appreciate it.
I will be tapering the bamboo tonight. just watch along ask questions if needed and use the same principles as I am with my sanding block on your belt sander with will be pretty straight forward. Tapering the bamboo in the manner I will be to me is very important for looks and durabiltiy. It offers a good looking side profile, if the bamboo is not tapered when the profile is shaped all the suddent the bamboo looks much thicker at the tips than at the fades however we know its not but that is the way it appears and to me does not offer the best of looks. also bamboo is very tough stuff and if not tappered and thined very thin can over power the belly.
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Thanks Boughnut, I'll be looking forward to learning your techniques.
A few questions:
Do you strap/clap the bamboo to a form when you temper?
And a bit ahead of the process: when narrowing the bamboo at the tips, does that happen kind of naturally during the thinning process?
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To answer your question no I do it a bit different when working with hand tools If i was going to be working with my power tools I would tapper it as a whole and yes that would bring the edges in towards the tips kinda naturally givng you the bow profile. but as you can see in my pics here I am going to establish the profile before tapering but only to the bamboo not to the osage or ipe. Once out of the heat box I reflatened the belly as you can see the shavings come off and bit better due to the slightly cround belly you see in the first photo. that is what happens when you heat temper it the amount of crown you see ont he belly side is almost equal to the amount of crown you took of the back. If i did not do this first and tried to heat cure my glue the belly would swell then and not now seperating the edges of the bamboo from the ipe lam causing a very pore glue joint. this is why this is only important if you are going to heat cure your glue. You will not have that problem if you do not heat it at any point. ok so you can see I flattened tbe belly out again thinning it a bit more as well. it is not perfectly flat and that is ok I just wanted to get a general flat ness to it so I could trace my profile out easily. as you can see in the last photo my rough profile is now drawn out on the belly of the bamboo for a guide line. there are many way yout can go about working tis down to the profile that you have draw and I will demonstrate a few tonight. also this allows you to get your bamboo to a perfectly straight profile with your tips lined up with your handle perfectly. Ok first thing you want to do is find center of your boo 33.25 inches mark it then got 8 inches from either side of that and mark it this will give your your 16" handle and fade area. make a perfectly straight line from center of all yoru handle marking down each limb area of the boo to establish your center using that as a guide go to the tips of each limb area and evenly to each side of this line make them roughly 5/8" wide. draw a straight tapered line from edge of each 8" out handle marking to the tip markings this will line everything up. And you can do what works best for you to bring the edges in to your markings to establish the profile just remember always work with files saws scraper from the back to the belly and from the handle area to the tips if your go the other directions yoru wil get some nasty splinters of the back and sides.
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"And you can do what works best for you to bring the edges in to your markings to establish the profile just remember always work with files saws scraper from the back to the belly and from the handle area to the tips if your go the other directions yoru wil get some nasty splinters of the back and sides. " That's a great reminder. I would add sandpaper block also. I caught a splitter with sandpaper on a hickory bow, Monday. Now, the 28" working limbs are going to be 26 1/2, which will stil work for my friends 25" draw. But I had planned to tiller it to 28, just in case she let someone else shoot the bow.
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ok sorry guys skiped a day or two but Have gotten some work done I now have the bamboo ready for gluing just have to work the ipe core and osage belly then shape the handle insert. Any way you will see in these pics one good way to cut the profile of your bamboo out using a hacksaw. all you do is about every half inch cut down to the line. once you do that all the way down both sides you can just take your draw knife and basically split the tabs off carefully once that is done you can now use your sanding block to sand the rest of the tabs off. I like this method over any seems to be that fastest when using hand tools. once you have done that you can just reduce the belly as evenly and flat as possible to leave a good flat glue surface all the way down to the edges this will give your bamboo the perfect tapper. Depending on how crowned your bamboo is this will give you between a 2 and a 4 thousands per running inch taper. this came out right a 3. once reduced to the edges rough up your glue surface and move on to the next part. that is where I am at. the bamboo looks perfect I used my file and sanding block to reduce it. getting it this thin really is important to remove the risk of over powering your belly and to help it glue up around the handle insert. I am supper happy how it turned out after all that hard work and not using hand tools for so long.
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This is pretty sweet! Thanks for posting!
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Couple of questions:
1. I have not been able to find a source of 'raw' bamboo in my area, but I've found some laminated bamboo. Would this work for backing? (1/4" strips of bamboo made into a 1"x6"x8' board.) Do you think that I'd have to heat temper this?
2. Does Titebond III work for glueing up a bow like this? Or do I have to have some kind of heat curred epoxy?
Thanks,
Gordon
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It might work but you might suffer a fail around any nodes. the nodes just like knots on a self bow need to stay raised. so raw is the way to go but what you have there is good for core lamination's. I dont like using titebond glues my self although they are good. the key with titebond is to make sure all your glue joints are flush with each other and you do not clamp to hard. I would use a urea glue for this type of project urac, pro glue, unibond type glues. all have worked well for me and you do not need to heat treat the glue all that does with these types of glues is cure it faster. the only glue that really needs heat treatment is the clear epoxy's like smooth on and other similar glues. If you do try titebond I would go with titebond 2 it is waterproof like titebond 3 and has no sawdust mixed in with it. If I am right about that titebond 3 has saw dust mixed in that is why it is a darker color and In my opinion would not hold as well. I could be wrong though as I dont use titebond. I like to heat no mater what glue I use because it helps to shape the wood and will also help the bow keep more reflex.
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Thanks Boughnut. I'm going to start my glue up this weekend.
Gordon