Broken Bow

[superdav95]

there's a simple trick boys!

dont pull it apart and don't use epoxy like west sytems or ea 40. those are artificially thickend with thixotropic agents.

use a casting resin suitable for wood. these normally are used for making laminations of fiber cloth and they are designed to creep.

pour it in that crack and it will quickly displaces ALL of the air and automatically creep into every crack. no heating required, room temp is just fine. use one that has a open time of at least 60 min and clamp after 30min. If the crack goes all through seal it well on one side with super adhesive tape - ducktape does not work, the epoxy creeps underneath!

cheers

Well there ya go!  Learn something every day.  I would never have thought about resin for fiberglass fiber.  It works on wood boats so why not!  I have had good luck with ea-40 with heating it up slight to get it down into smaller cracks too.  Another option to possibly consider may be hide glue.  I’ve not tried this type of fix with hide glue yet but it would creep well and sink deep into wood good. It would also be able to be thinned down to seeped better too like a size coats.  Just a thought. 

[sleek]

West System is one of the two best resins there are to use for boats. I use it for my bows. It thins out like water when heated with a hair dryer and it gets out into the cracks well. I dont know anything about the other epoxy Simk is using but it seems to work also, so options are a good thing to have.

[Selfbowman]

That bow was built in July of 2015 I think. Serial number should be 175715 bow number 175. I gotten better since then . I’m on 341 now.🤠🤠🤠

[Selfbowman]

My dates aren’t lining up . Can you still see the numbers on the bow?

[Arrowbuster]

Lots of good intel on this site I knew you guys would have some ideas. I think I will try the resin, that never crossed my mind it should work fine. Arvin if your bows are even better you are going to have to put me on the list for another one. I have made a few trying to get close to that one but I still don't have the skill. That bow shot amazing and was pretty dang fast. I broke it a few years ago and put it on a shelf thinking I might get back to it and try to repair, now is the time, I now have confidence in trying to fix it.

[simk]

superdave, the hideglue repair I did use sucessfully for the repair of sinewbacking that lifted certain spots. for fine woodcracks i'd consider you need to thin it well. then you have very minimal glue and probably not fill the gaps after drying?

sleek, Glue are a interesting topic. I didnt say west systems is a bad choice for bowmaking - so many people using it sucessfully, cannot be bad. I havent used that one. but these glues are made to stay in place after application. you can cheat them with heat a little. then the resin is made to instantly creep and spread. you cannot make a bow unless thicken it with "thixotropic agents" - thats what they sell them as. In my case I use cotton flakes to adjust viscosity. makes my cheap goto epoxy for almost 10 years now. resin l by r&g, germany. the resin must be mixed very precisely by weight. I use the expensive stuff only for the very critical parts, like tips and hornjoints.