Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: Eric Krewson on April 06, 2019, 06:40:01 am
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I saw this bow listed on the Facebook, marketplace, met the guy (crackhead) but didn't unstring the bow. Strung, the tiller was perfect, it was a very well made hickory bow, I gave him $30 for it. I thought it had never been unstrung but waited until I got it home to do so, it has a little string follow.
I like crazy projects and will fix this bow and make a great shooter out of it with heat and possibly bamboo. More to follow.....
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I’ve done with some old York and Pearson bows. Very rewarding to get a 70 y/o bow back shooting well.
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Now that's first rate string follow right there.
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Well I would have to disagree about the perfect tiller but that's just me.
Good luck on the project
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Eric said the tiller was perfect when braced. I think it's unbraced in the photo...
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Yep, braced tiller, it is unbraced now, who ever made it initially knew what they were doing and I am a tough critic. The bow has no markings on it, I will fix it and give it away to some newbie.
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I would steam bend it back in to the reflex and make a good heat treating of belly.... and bamboo :)
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I received a trade bow several years ago with that same unstrung profile. You could string it by barely flexing it. I burnt it. It wasn't worth wasting my time on it.
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If it's straight could you just glue in some reflex when you put the backing on. I'm wondering if you don't heat the set out of it if it will have more "Perry" by starting out deflexed.
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Del has a very good blog entry on bringing well loved bows with set back life. He removes damaged wood and heat treats after. I don’t think steam would hold and Perry might be similar. I think you’ve got to get the crushed wood off then strengthen what remains. It doesn’t take that much wood removal.
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Good luck Eric :OK
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I have a similar osage bow,, someone gave me,, I have been meaning to fix it,, so I gonna watch you for inspiration,, :)
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bet that one is easy to string. . .
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bet that one is easy to string. . .
Yes, but You must do it after every shot....
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Shes dang sure,broke in to the string..
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This isn't my first recovery job, it is pretty easy to do. Like I said I may add bamboo, I have bambooed two or three bows that were lost causes and made surprisingly good bows out of them.
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I had a hickory bow take set bad before. So i just flipped it arpund, belly for back, and shot it till it took set that way, then flipped it again. It was neat, then i bamboo bellied it, made the bamboo the back, and it still shoots fine. Hickory is veraitile like that. Id bet it would look neat with bamboo running up the fades like that, and shot backwards. Its what i would do, seeing as the back has no compression problems yet, and its nicely reflexed if you flip the bow around.
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Yes, the bow has quite string follow but it is not destroyed. What I would do is to heat treat the belly to remove string follow and add a little bit of reflex then tiller it and see how it does. Nothing to lose a lot to learn
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I reflexed one limb and toasted the belly, the picture shows the string follow limb on the right and reflexed limb on the left. I just heated the other limb and it is cooling now.
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Toasted, I may work a little more near the fades, this bow is above 70# right now.
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Good job! Now it's time to tiller and cross your fingers.
BUT DO NOT HURRY, heat treateing have made that the wood lost a lot of moisture, you have to wait, maybe even a pair of weeks. If you have access to a moisture meter it would be great, if moisture below 8% don't touch the wood, between 8 and 12 would be more or less ok though many people says hyckory benefits from low humidity. Meanwhile you can make another bow
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I have a moisture meter, hickory can stand very low M/C, 6% is not to low. It is going rain for the next week so I suspect my hickory will rehydrate well.
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Way to go then
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Wow. So the difference between the string follow limb and the recently heat treated limb is about how much? 8, 10 inches?
I've never seen a bow with that much string follow.
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It was probably stung by an owner that knew nothing about selfbows and left strung its entire life.
I posted a thread about selfbow etiquette on the stickbow site, it was surprising how many guys had no idea on how to treat a selfbow.
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"this bow is above 70# right now" whoa...... (A) looks like you are saving that puppy, be interesting to see the final outcome.
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I put it aside for a few days, it has a suspect knot near the tip of one limb so I glued on one long tip overlay to cover it but haven't done the other end to match yet. I got side tracked building bamboo arrows from some shafts from china, these are really good shafts.
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Ignore this comment, just putting a bookmark in here so I can find my way back later. I am going to want to follow this closely!
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I am actually doing two recoveries, this one is an osage bow I made 20 years ago and was found in an abandoned storage locker. It may have been left strung for up to 20 years and had a piece of electric fence wire for a string. It was in the same condition as the above bow, today is crack filling day, lots of superglue.
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Eric, I like that word "recovery" nice to bring those bows back to life,,
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Nice recovery job! Good luck on the Osage, but I suspect you won't need more than a touch of tlc! (A complement to your skill level!). What superglue do you use? My first diabolical thought was: "can we flog the dude that left it strung that long, with the fence wire attached, as we flog?" >:D. I wonder how many bows are out there awaiting rescue?
Hawkdancer
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I will be watching this one too, see if I can apply some of these methods to some butchered first attempts of mine >:D
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A friend came over, looked at my bow and said he had one just like it and that it was a Jimmy Taylor bow. Jimmy had made over 10K bows and knew how to make a good bow but was a shady character when it came to his business practices.
In Jimmy you couldn't find a more generous man or a bigger liar, he was a bit of a conundrum. He bilked a lot of people out of money before he died. Had he been honest and dedicated to his customers he would have probably been rich from his bow making endeavors, he could really crank them out. It took him 15 minutes to make a wood bow, a day or so to make a fiberglass lam bow. He would ship 100 bows at a time to Europe, supply most of the catalog retail sales and took over production for Dan Quillian's Archery Traditions bows toward the end before Dan shut him down for his shady dealing.
Jimmy, one of a kind;
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I bought my first hickory backing strips from Jimmy at the Southeastern Trad Championships in Elberton GA many years ago. Every time I saw him he was in buck skins. My friend Allan Brown bought lots of Jimmy's hickory backed kids bows to sell at Trad shoots. I never got a bad deal from Jimmy but I was aware of his reputation.
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I thought it was braced and I was trying to find the string. ;D