Bear Kodiak 1961 Traditional Recurve - Full Rework - Part 2

Hey, guys. So we finished up part one of the 1961 bear Kodiak, and we were going to do it in one video, but it was just too huge. So the first video is about 37 minutes. But anyway, we're going to get started on part two and we'll finish up the complete restoration of the 1961 bear Kodiak. And it turned out awesome. We're really happy with it and it was a fun build. So it's the next day here because we started filming a little bit late and we've got this all filed. So the next step is we always follow our steps. Clean up this radius with 120. Just get in there. Because it's hard to get in there with any power tools. What I've got here is my rubber things that I preform these and I got like three different sizes that I use. The majority, I have about six of these, but I have about three different sizes that I prefer. So upon further inspection of this bow, we knew that this was a rosewood of some type. We just didn't know what kind it was. We were actually looking at that page he sent, and they call it African rosewood, which the rosewood family is quite extensive. So there could be. It could be a lot of different kinds of rosewood. I kind of have my ideas on what it is, but I couldn't say definitively. But we definitely knew it was in the rosewood family just because of the smell and the grain structure. To us, it actually smells like bubinga. Okay. And it stands like bubinga because this bubinga stands really tough and difficult. You see that spot right there? That's a scratch. And you think, oh, I've got it. It's smooth. No, if you don't get that out, that'll be an eyesore once it's finished. Rubinga is one of the harder sanding rosewoods if it is bubinga. But it makes for a fantastic bow because it's a very solid wood that doesn't experience a lot of checking and cracking. And it's not super extreme expensive. It gets more expensive different times, but depends on what the country, what kind of tariffs or laws they're putting on it. But normally it's. It's not that expensive and it's a fantastic wood. I know it takes a little longer to get this. About got it, though. I'm gonna switch place. Okay. That looks pretty good. I got a nice radius on that shell. It doesn't quite look right because this little ridge here where it was previously makes it look a Little weird, but that'll all be changed. We're going to clean up this transition here to the shelf. This is going to be a gorgeous bow when we're done. So I noticed this here line was straight. Obviously, when you radius this more, it's going to naturally put a little curve on that there. Different kind of wood coming into there. That looks good. That actually looks. Looks pretty cool. So we'll bump up over the top of this because that'll be hard to get off with our flat sanders if we don't. You can see that old finish as it comes off. You see that spider cracks, those cracks. There's horizontal cracks in that finish. There was a pretty high quality finish on this bow because you couldn't see that very much until you sanded it. But for it to last as long as it has without having those develop in the limbs, they had a pretty good finish on it to begin with. I see some bows that are only a couple years old that have these that come in my shop for reworks. And you know, that's not a good finish. So all we're gonna do is clean up these scratches right in here. But being careful not to damage that radius we've already sanded really doesn't take a whole lot. I thought that was a scratch, but it's actually that a different kind of wood there. Okay, that's beautiful. Now that shelf on this side is done, we'll move on to the next step. Okay. We're gonna clean up these tips real quick. That's the next step here. And these tips are not bad. They really aren't. Sometimes I see a really rough transition right here. It's a pretty good transition. We'll clean it up just a little bit. I like it a little bit better than that. This one's better than the other one. Now, one thing I did not. I do not like the string grooves on these. They're so shallow that they're really not doing much for the bow. And this one's a little bit off to the side. We're gonna leave them where they are because we straighten this bow and we'll just let them fall where they are. But I am going to clean them up and deepen them just a hair. So we'll start with the top side or the backside. I guess it would be of this bow on the tips. Put it in my jig here. I'm gonna change this a little bit more down. Okay. And Ben's. That's a fairly good transition. I'm not really gonna change that. A whole lot. I'm just gonna come in here and clean it up. This is gonna get bright white when I touch it. I gotta be careful that I don't take too much off. We don't want to shallow the string groove up too much. But in order to do a full rework and make this bow beautiful, we do have to touch every surface. I think I'm going to go with a tighter radius here. See that? Now standard, these bare bows, they put kind of a straight transition here. I'm gonna, I'm gonna give it just a little bit of round. Looks so much better. Plus these laminations here are rounded. So that never looks good when it's straight here. And then rounded, rounded. That's, that doesn't, that doesn't look very professional. So we're going to change that. What it looks like is that the bowyer skipped a step. We don't skip step. That's the rule. I know. I thought this would turn bright white on most of them. It does. But this, this color of glass is not a true white. It must have been. It's sort of a, got a greenish tint probably to go along with the rest of the bow. Okay, we're going to stop right there. Like I said, we don't want to take too much off there. I'll grab some sandpaper here and we'll just come in here and we're just going to clean the wax residue. Clean these up nice and pretty. You know, deepen it just slightly. These are reinforced with glass. Three layers of glass for the tips. There's nothing wrong with that in my opinion. It's not quite as strong as like a gtn or an FR4, but it's also been proven to be, to be plenty strong enough to protect it from the, from the fastbite strings. Okay, now that's done, we're going to clean up the edges and blend it all in. If you have uneven depths on these side grooves, the bow is way more likely to develop a limb twist over time just because it's pulling unevenly from side to side. All this stuff matters on the high quality restoration. And that's a finished tip. Alright, so here we are on the belly side of this recurve. And like I said, I'm gonna deepen these and just clean them up, make them look real pretty. They're not bad, but you know, they don't look 100% professional. I don't really want to go all the way through this glass. I could. And actually there's a design out There, like that. And it does kind of look cool where you got, like, a light there. But this bow wasn't designed that way. And when I restore these old bows, I like to make them beautiful, but keep as much of their original design as possible to honor the bowyers that built these bows. So we don't. You know, I wouldn't really appreciate it if another bowyer took one of my bows and completely changed the design of it. Now, once it's their bow, they can do whatever they want with it. But I just think it's more respectful to keep the original design in order to give the original bowyer the most respect that he deserves for building it. Okay, so I've got that now. I think these were done with a machine, but I don't know how this will get a little sketchy because we gotta. We gotta do a beautiful. See that? Shane did a naughty there. So got to be careful coming in here. I want this nice, nice and smooth. And then I'm going to come in with this one and transition that nice and smooth into there. These are kind of difficult. There's really no reason for this little V here. It does kind of look cool, but a bow doesn't really need it. But this is how this one was designed, so we're going to be true to that. And I want that to be nice and crisp. That V right there coming in there, you know, straight back off the point of the tip. Now, these are a little more normally minor. This here parts removed for ease of stringing, but that's not how this bow is designed. So makes it a little more difficult to get your tools in here. But not. Not big. It's not a big deal. It just. Okay, that's looking really good. I want these outside lines right along here to be pretty, too. So. Okay, that looks good. Maybe just a little bit more on this one. Yeah. Okay, let's clean it up. And to do that, we will start with 120 to get the bigger scratches out. And we're gonna go with a tighter radius. This is my tightest rubber sanding padding. And you can see if you look down there, I've got that sharpened really sharp. We're going to need that to get in here without damaging these edges. So let's come in here. And the first thing I'm going to do is just clean this up on top. What that does is it allows me to see my lines a little bit better without being confused by scratches or something. Make this nice and beautiful, symmetrical, coming straight up off the Point there, and then I'll clean up these edges really good. Okay. Now we're gonna delicately come in here and clean up this string groove. When we get to sandpaper. You know, we're in the last stages here, so we've got to be really careful that we don't mess up our lines at this stage. The file just roughs it out for us. Now we're into the finesse of being a bowyer. Come in here. Nothing sharp. You can't leave anything sharp or something that would, over time, where prematurely wear a string out. Okay. And this is going to naturally widen the string groove, which I'm totally good with. I felt like it was a little bit small, and the string was not reaping the potential benefits from this string groove like it should be on this particular bow. So this will clean it up nice and pretty. And widen that string groove so that that string immediately lays back flat in that groove. And then the bow has far less ability to twist over its lifetime on this old glass. You see, it's not the quality of glass that we have now. And you'll run into little glass voids or voids in the glass where they look like scratches. They're actually not scratches. They're just actually little voids where the resin wasn't compressed with the glass fiber tube. And I'll show you one. There's one right there. Now, that's not a scratch. That's actually just part of this old fiberglass. I know that's not a scratch because I bend it over that quite a bit because I initially thought it was a scratch. You really won't see that when we're done. You might see a little of it, but that's just the character of these older bows. This is a 1961 Bear Kodiak. Now, it was probably built in the 60s. I'm not sure if it was built in 1961 or, you know, that's. That's the model number, model name. So it was probably built, you know, quite a bit of time after that. Or it could have been. It could have been. I don't know how precise that Bear was on that. Somebody probably knows. Put it in the comments. Last step is on this. We're just gonna. You can see that there, that darker stuff. That's old finish. So the last step is just to take that out. We don't want any old finish left on this. None. That is an. Actually, a bit. Actually, that's part of that is a bit of a. A bad glue line. But it won't hurt anything. Okay. Now I'm going to just look down from on top, make sure that they're perfectly across, that they're the same depth, and there's no sharp edges left that could cut a string or shorten the life of a string. Okay. That looks really nice. Okay. Make sure I got all the scratches out. We're not going to touch this tip again. It's done. It's ready for finish. This is really fine sandpaper. Okay. I'm gonna pop this out, and I'll just show you the completed restored kit. So. Whoops. There's the back side of the limb, and I can. Here's the belly side. You can see it's all symmetrical. Same depth screen. Grooves are opened up, widened. Real pretty. Now you can really see those lines in the glass on here. A lot of that will disappear when finish hits it. But that's just old glass. But, yeah, it's a beautiful tip. Now everything is symmetrical. Same depth. Transition is perfectly smooth. You can't even feel it. There we have a finished tip. Okay, we'll do the other side, but we won't film that. Okay. So we've carved it, we've tuned it, we've done the tips, and we are ready for the refinishing part of this boat. So what we're going to start with here is the overlays. Now, we do have these side window holes, so we've got to. We've got to fill those, and I have a plan for that. And I'm going to quickly run over this with random orbit. And just to get our white color back very lightly. Very light pressure. I did notice on this bow, there's like a. I don't know if this was on purpose or an accident, but there's a little indention there. I would say that's on purpose. So I need to be mindful of that and not mess that up. I'm just putting very light pressure on it. I thought about this, and I think the best way to fill these holes is to actually use the material that the holes are in. So what I'm going to do. And I thought, well, I could plug them, but anything, you know, the. The. The very best way to fix this probably would be to overlay these holes. Holes. But if I did that, I would definitely change the vintage look of the way these overlays look. I don't have this color of glass overlay. This is not a white. This is. It's either a white that's aged or it's an off white or Something. But normally, when I do these bows, this is actually bright white. When I sand into it, this is not that way. So in order to get this perfectly the same color, what I decided to do is to use the dust from its own self. What I'm going to gently do is create some dust in that hole, and we're going to build that hole up with its own dust. So now you can see it's sort of like filling a hole with a welder, if you're a welder. And then we'll just put a little drop of ca in there. You can see that build up around it. Well, that fell in, so we'll have to. There we go. Start. Hopefully this doesn't fall in. That didn't fall in as bad. That's good. We'll keep filling it with that white dust. Very good. Okay. Might take a couple times. Okay. Keep going. This should never come out of here. This is a ca. But while I do this, I have to be really careful that I don't go through that white, because that would change the look of this. All right. You can see the progress already by the little darker area around the hole, how far we've come in. So we're. We're making good progress on filling it. Okay, now that's as good as you're ever gonna get that to fix that hole. That's rock solid. That's CA glue, Specially formulated for wood projects. Now, we'll come down here, and we're gonna do the same thing. But as I do this, this one's a little more touchy because we're kind of half in green and half in white. So do we fill it with white, or do we fill it with green? I think we just let it decide as we sand over it. There it is. There it builds. Yeah, that looks good. Real big. I love it. That looks good. This is a very deep scratch. It's almost all the way through. I thought about it, and I think the strongest way to fill it without ruining the bow Is to fill it with its own dust. Like I did these. I thought about putting glass on it. Now, keep in mind, this scratch is on the fade out of the riser, so it's a safer place. Now, if this scratch was out here, I might approach this differently. But it's on a pretty stable area. It's got wood underneath it from the riser itself. So we're gonna go ahead. But before I. Before I fill it, I want to. It does have finish on top of it, and I'm not too keen on filling it with. We're just gonna come right on top of that thing, begin to fill it with its own dust. Now, on this one, I don't really want to take a chance and just start filling around the edges. I want to pack because I want it to be as structurally stable as possible. You see this little bit of dust I got here? That's glass dust. What I'm going to do is I'm going to push it in there and push it down hard like that. Before I. Before I use my ca. That way I know I'm actually feeling the bottom of this gouge and not just the top. Come on. I'm not going to stand over that because I don't want just glue in there. So I'm gonna just dab it like that and clean that out. Okay, now I shall make some more dust. We have to be careful as we're doing this because we don't want to sand a hole into this lim. Okay. Probably do this in about three pills, let that sit for just a little bit, and then blot it out again. It was a deep gouge, Tremendously deep gouge. Now, if a guy had a decal where you could put it on here, you'd never know it was here. Or if you. If you covered it, like, with rattlesnake skin or something, of course, then you'd cover these up. That wouldn't be good. Now, what I'm doing is I'm just kind of blending where I stand it by sanding a little bit higher and maybe a little bit lower. But I have to stay off of that decal. Just kind of blending it all in here. But look at that repair. Look at that thing coming out of there. That is a beautiful repair. I mean, the finish isn't on it yet, but look at that bad boy. Okay. Well, we had to switch mics because my phone died. So we're using a different setup now. So what we were doing here is we've got a little too much positive tiller. So we gotta take a little bit off this limb. Probably just like, one stroke on here. It. Some of these bows move really fast. Try that. Okay. About six and seven. Sixteen. Okay, That's. That's nearly. That's perfect right there. That is so perfect. So we're straight, we're tillered, we're tuned. Let's check the weight. That's the final thing we're gonna do. Here, let me flip this. We're dead on £40. After all the work on it, which was our target, he did not want to go below £40 for hunting. So the limbs needed an awful lot of work. So I'm happy with that. I was very careful. But, you know, we still took off £4 just because there was so much work that needed to be done on them. It was so crooked and twisted. So that had to be taken out the way we took it out. It should never twist again. It's a lot better than just twisting it the other way and hoping that it's gonna stay. So we're gonna mark on here £40 right there. Now we're ready for the final stage, which is where we're going to take 320 paper and get this down to where it takes all the scratches out. So let's do that quick. And that's not going to take any weight off the bow because the paper is so fine. It's almost like rubbing a piece of writing paper on it. And you can see how incredibly fine that stuff is. It is 320 grit. Obviously there's a lot finer grits than that out there, but for What I use, it's 320 is the finest I use in the bow shop. Now on this we will count our strokes. We will do them exactly the same. And that way it will not change the tune and the tiller. Okay. 1, 2 and 3. 1, 2 and 3. One, two and three. One, two and three. Now I'll come back up here, kind of clean these up. I did notice on here we have some slight rippling. So we're gonna have to just come back on here and do another three on both backs. So 1, 2, 3. 1, 2 and 3. Okay, that step is done. Now the last thing we're gonna do, actually. No, we're done. We'll take it back over with some hand sandpaper and I'll show you what we do next. You don't ever want to leave sharp edges because that's a prime place for it to chip. And we don't want any chip. So we're gonna come along here and just ease these. Gonna ease them and then just ease it all the way around this here. We're gonna ease, ease it down onto here. It'll still, it'll still have its character. You'll still see the lines that set it apart. But we just don't want any sharp edges that can chip. So we're just gonna come around, take care of all those. Then we're gonna just sort of blend it, you know, with the different styles of sanding that that has to be blended Together, for instance, a pneumatic drum versus a random orbit. There are different styles of sanding, and sometimes you can see the difference if you don't blend them together with the same style of sanding. Not always. And if you know, this is just really fine work if you want to take it to this level. But I always take it to this level. So blending, blending up here, just kind of going over it gently. When I do a restoration or rework, I treat every one of them the same. Okay, that bow is finished, and it is ready for finish. All right, so we're gonna wipe this down. You can kind of see the colors come out, but we don't want any of that dust on there when we go to spray it. So this is just lacquer thinner, and you got to be pretty quick. You don't want lacquer thinner to sit on any bow, because it can soften up the glue. So you just go over it real quick, clean off all the residue, any sort of tape residue or anything. This makes the first coat go on really nice and really cuts down on the sanding between coats. We always sand between every coat. Anyway, you have to. I wanted to just show here these repairs. You know, they're not. You can. Can tell that they're not. They were repairs, but you can't feel them at all. And something like this is never, ever going to affect the performance of your bow, whereas you might have to worry about that a little bit. If you actually put a piece of glass, Fiberglass or glass cloth or anything, it would most definitely affect the performance of some somehow. So the next step is to write on it, and for that, Chris is going to write on it, because my handwriting sucks, so she is going to write on it for us. Okay. I blow this off. I always blow it off and run my hand over it. That knocks loose any dust, any debris, anything that'll knock it loose. And then with the air, make sure that your finish is perfect. All right, you ready to see the colors of this beauty pop? That's how it looks like. Now pour, spray. There's the repairs. They're really nice. Okay, let's spray it. Start on the bottom here in the tip. Make sure we get that real nice. All right. My gun's a little too. Something very interesting is happening, and I will tell you all about it here in a second. Okay. As you can see, the glass on this bow is gray. I did not anticipate that. Apparently, the outside color of this old bow was actually green. The. The finish was green. Because this is Definitely, Most definitely gray glass. I have never seen one like that, so I did not expect that. And that's starting to make sense now why those collars were so different than I'd ever ran into. But that is a gray glass bow, so I'm not entirely sure what my customer will say about that. I noticed a spot I need to hit just a little bit more. It's still very beautiful. It's a very beautiful bow, but it is not green. It is gray glass. This is something for you guys on YouTube to comment about. I did not know that underneath the green color, it was gray. Is this, was this, is this a common theme? That they actually use gray glass and then they would. The finish on top of it was green. Is this, is this common? Please let me know in the comments maybe because this is very interesting. I didn't know until right now this glass was gray. I just thought a lot of times when you sand glass, it'll be it. It'll change color. And then when you put the finish on, the original color comes back. I did notice that whenever I was sanding it, it did seem to be green, but that's pretty common. Like when the. The sanding, the sanding powder, the. The sanding dust was greenish. But usually that's really common on colored glass. It's going to be green all the way through or red all the way through or brown all the way through. I just figured that, you know, you're sending a little bit of green off, but in this case, the finish was the collar for this bow. The finish was the green underneath was gray glass. Now, it's beautiful how it is, but it is no longer a green glass bow. So I guess we'll see what my customer says about that. It would have been completely impossible to restore and refinish this bow and maintain the green color, unless, of course, you were to spray green collar back onto it. This is very interesting to me. Very interesting. I have a lot of questions right now. So in the comments on this video, fire away. Let's get some knowledge on why this happened and what. What's going on here. So that's our restoration of the 1961 Bear Kodiak forward handle recurve. Thanks for watching. As always, we appreciate all of our customers appreciate our. Our YouTube subscribers. Please subscribe if you haven't and we will do another one soon. Thanks for watching.