Vintage Bow Rework

We're gonna soup it all up. We're gonna radius the side plate, radius the shell, recarve the riser, give it a facelift tiller, tune it, straighten it and see what we got. But first thing, let's shoot it. Alright, so this bow is 43 pounds. I don't have a nocking point on it yet, but we really don't need one for just testing it. Oh, it gets really stiff. It probably starts tacking about 25 inches. Hey, not bad. Put my bow arm up a little bit. I imagine if I made mine 48 inches, a lot of my limb profiles would stack also. This is just a short, short bow, but I'll get to here. It's stacking right there. Pretty heavy. Bullseye. Not a bad little bow. Let's get it unstrung and do some magic. First things first, we're going to strip off the stuff we don't want on here. If you think weather stripping is an Olympic sport, you might be a redneck. But a lot of these old stabilizer bushings are just glue in. Look at that. That thing is just barely on. What kind of medallion it's got a little poker. Okay, we are stripped now. We're going to follow the traditional steps. That way we don't make mistakes. And the first step we're going to do is we are going to fix the tips. There's a tip real pretty and real pretty. It's almost a center shot bow. But with the side plate rest on there, it actually pushes it out to where it is not a center cut bow. So I'm going to take about a 16th off and move it over so that when you put your side plate material on there, it still as a center shot. I'm going to radius it back here, radius it here. And I'm also going to radius the shelf because it's very flat. There's no high point. We don't have just a lot of material down here, but we've got enough. We will start by hacksawing the shelf out. You have to set your layout points or it just throws you off. The way that this bow is cut, it's so far forward that you know the radius. The high point can be clear into here. Where a lot of bows. It needs to be back here. Alright, that's good. I try to keep as much integrity to the original bow year bow company that I can when redoing a bow. I mean it stacks but it's really a cool design, honestly. But that is so much more radius than what it Had. Now I am going to make this shelf smaller. It's just gigantic right now. Okay, that's good. So we'll move over to the pneumatic sleeve. They do have a little hole dug here. Even after I did the side plate, that hole is still there. So that hole must have been pretty deep. You can see what I'm talking about right there. There's a hole that when they were machining this bow, they just didn't do a great job on. When the paint comes off that easy, it's kind of fun. It just. It's exciting to see what's underneath. I wouldn't say the same for changing diapers. It's not that exciting to see what's underneath. All right, last step on this here station. We're going to take out this here area right there. Okay. Tips and shelf and side plate finish. We've got a beautiful nice radius coming around there. We've got a nice radius here. You look at this. The high point is right above your webbing, across your hand. The next step will be to carve the riser. He wants this shallowed out, and I agree with him because this. You got a hot spot here and here, and it just cramps your hand in there. So let's go for it. Oh, crap. Oh. Okay. I'm going to make a mark here. See my progress? I think I want to take it down to about right there, Sam. That feels pretty good. I bet I took a good 38 off, if not more. We don't want to go too far because we do have a bushing in here. And if we compromise that, we'll call that good. We'll send this up that we did. You can see how I have to do this. And a lot of my refinishes. I've got to do work like this that is incredibly time consuming and just sucks up my time. So if you're anywhere under 300 bucks or 400 bucks when you get your bow back, you're still getting a good deal because we don't really want to have a square. Square. A square is going to look kind of bad. You're still going to see some of that old finish because I can't get onto it. Or I'll take off the white decals. That's how I'm going to do it. So I'll go ahead and do this one and this one right here, and then we'll check back in. I've already done both. Both limbs of the back side. They're ready. As I've been Standing here, one thing I noticed is, and it could be just the way that this here mo was stored or kept, but the finish on here is super hard. Could be, you know, what they were using back that time in the bear factory, or it could be, you know, that it was stored in an attic or somewhere where it just baked the finish on. I don't know. But it's a kind of a big problem. And I'll tell you why it's a big problem. Because he doesn't want any weight reduced on this bow. So if I didn't have to worry about that, I would just take it to my power sanders, my pneumatics, and we'd have that finish off in a couple minutes. But because we can't take weight off of it, we can't do that. So we have to carefully take it off with hand sandpaper. Right around this here decal, you've got this sort of little cloudy. That's. I know that's the bow finish. Underneath that you've got another cloud. And I know from experience that in order to make it perfect, both of these clouds ideally should come off. However, to take this one off, I don't know what this is. I don't know if this is the base layer of the finish, maybe like a gloss coat to make it harder, or if it's some sort of finish that is on the old glass. This intermediary cloud here, that comes off pretty easy. Obviously, I can't get much closer than that because there's a decal there, but that comes off pretty easy. This one comes off really hard. I'm definitely not going to get this cloud off here, here. But I'm gonna at least get a little bit more of this. This deep cloud off it. Have to look for it to see it once it's finished. So I'm done with that one. And now I'll. Now I'll do this side. So I'm going to do this overlay. Now, if this yellow wasn't on there, I wouldn't have to clean that up. But we cannot leave that yellow on there. That is beautiful. Brilliant white again. Now, this is where you have to be real careful, because right where there's a hole, there's not much glass. You can go through that glass so quick. Okay, now here's what I want to show you. Look how poorly these are shaped. So they came in here, here, and then it's just straight across. That's not great craftsmanship. You go further up, this is straight, too. But look at this one. It's on an angle. We can't leave that like that. I would get in so much trouble from jog if I left that like that. Okay, that looks really good. See how this whistles? I'm deaf in my left ear right now. So we got the overlays. There's no overlays on the belly. Let's clean up the grip. Get that done real quick. I'm gonna put a chamfer on that because I want to reduce the size of this just a little bit. Not that much because we do need that protection for your. This is kind of one of my favorite processes. My favorite things to do is putting this camper on. It's just so simple. It just kind of. It's relaxing and it just goes on there. Oh, a third or fourth reason I do this. Whenever you got the bow all finished, sanded, ready to go to the spray booth, you take a little bit of sandpaper and hit these sharp edges. And then it's really, really hard to chip this from wear and tear. You drop your bow or lay it down. If this all comes to one point, it can check or crack. I'm talking a lot right now. Is that okay? Yeah, I'll just edit it out. Okay. This is just to kind of shape it. I use this here paper sort of as a mini planer, hand planer. Okay, I'm happy with that. Stuff that is scratches doesn't look like it. And stuff that isn't scratches looks like it. Any other riser wood, I'd have been done long ago with this step, but I just don't trust this maple. I don't want to get it in the spray booth. And then there's a scratch. Now we'll run the random orbit on this bad boy. And then we'll fill these, which will be fun. I enjoy doing that. But first we have to get a good surface here. Oh, look at that. There's some glue. Voids that were not fixed when the original production of this bow. We cannot have that. Okay, I'm gonna use that dust for buildup. All right, Here we go. There we go. All right. Now we quickly sand that and mix up some slurry. Okay. Now we go ahead and put some more in. Okay. As soon as it gets light colored, we go again. Okay, Those are filled perfectly. You alright? Yeah. I got a pinched nerve that's been bothering me for the last three weeks. And it's really bad right now. Actually, I'm gonna. Let me. Let me get a big drink of water. That'll help just Right along there. Fill it up. Oh, we got it. All right. It's gonna be pretty. Switch over to 220. Just paranoid about this maple. I just always think there's gonna be scratches whenever I spray it. Look at that. See, that's what I'm talking about. See that? Those are big, old, deep scratches. You know how much I sanded on that already? I'm gonna random orbit that. Yeah. Just always finding stuff, man. Okay. It looks really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really. Plus two more. Really good. How much weight you think it drops? I'm gonna. I'm gonna guess that it is sitting between 41 and 40 pounds. It's nearly a perfect refinish job. If I didn't have to go around those decals, it would be a perfect refinish job. Look how bright white those are. Perfectly tillered. Oh, £40. I was real careful. There's. There's no way you could have not taken off that amount of weight. There's just no way. Nice and straight. Nice and straight. So there's paint on that bad boy, but if I polish it, what color is it underneath? We're gonna find out. That'll work to the bottom of that first ring is what we have to polish to see. I could just get a bolt. This is the part of reworks that cost the shop so much money, because nothing ever goes according to plan. When you're working on old bows, you're always running into stuff that's like, man, they're very rewarding and fulfilling to do, but they also are expensive and time consuming. Try this. Look at that beautiful, shiny beast. Question is, Joshua, how are we gonna keep that thing in there? Epoxy might work. That was close. We're gonna move that glue up onto the sides. I knew it would do that. All that good. Here we go. Ow. That's hot. You know, let's get a new piece of still wool. That is some weak metal. Different plan now. Wow. We inset it. Now we just need this video to get a hundred thousand views, and then it won't matter that we are losing our shirt on the steel. Right, Right. All right, let's go. Let's take it to the buffer, see what we can do. Actually buffing up pretty nice. I'm getting more confident by putting my fingers right up against it, and that's usually when you lose ones. That's beautiful. Look at that. So now we inlay it because we broke off the stem. I wonder if I could, like, say that you broke it off. 9, 2 2. So it's a little over 7, 8 before I cut that hole. Is there any other? I could flatten this thing out, Josh. But if I do that, that'll increase the diameter of it. I already know that the closest size I have to is a 7, 8 forstner bit. If I flatten it out, it could gain a 30 second. You know what I'm saying, dog? Yeah. Well, with how easy that broke off the. Are you concerned about breaking it? Yeah, it might crack if I flattened it. If I flattened. It'll make full contact with the glue. Let's find us a 7, 8 here. You know, I could modify a paddle bit and it would go. It would make a perfect hole. How's your bit rack coming along? Oh, it's nice. You see, this is my bit rack, and it's really nice. Everything is all organized by size from smallest to biggest. The smallest is at the bottom, and the biggest, well, usually, yeah, 13, 16 inch and an 8, 11 16. You know what I always say, if you get. If you grab the one that you need first, you don't have to look near as long. We're on a wild adventure today. Dude, that's wrong. Those were on the bottom. See, I should be smallest to biggest. That's not right. That's a 7, 8. But that's been used on FR4. That thing's dull. That is a 7, 8, and that is a sharp. Relatively sharp. We'll set that one here. I don't think I even have a 7, 8 paddle bit. Let me look one more place. Quick. One inch. What's this? Oh, who's your daddy? Yeah, I found it. All right. That is not seven, eight. That'll come right through. That is already shaped. You could literally almost make the hole you needed and the center would be higher. Do we try it? That's way too big. Let's try a forstner. That's dead on seven, eight. All right. Ready to be terrified? Because I don't have a pilot hole. I think I should start it and then drop it in. I normally don't do it that way. You know what? Don't be a fool, Shane. Yeah, be a fool. No, don't be a fool. Now, I have a guide, so I will release these and I'll sink this down in here and pray that it doesn't pop out of there. I can't take my hand off that. That should work. This bow has been kind of an adventure, huh? So I've got to take off almost a full 32nd, which will be fine. I should still have a little bit of the rim left. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 8 gets us all the way around. So we got to go in multiples of eight. That keeps us round, man. Oh, yeah. It moved. What's going on? I think that's a plastic. I think that thing is plastic. That's why it broke off so easy. That's. That's a plastic or something. And it's just got a. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. Because look. That's just got a veneer of some sort of copper. That's pretty stinking cheap. I would have expected better than that from an old bare bowl. I feel something really bad happening, Joshua. What do I feel? Good thing we didn't try to flatten it. Oh, it would have just. It would have just shattered. It's pretty disappointing that they would use plastic for their medallion. That is so close. Just for the record, everyone, Great Plains medallions are solid metal all the way through. That would go in. I'm gonna go just a little more. We don't want to force anything. I want a tight fit, though. But if I go too tight, it's gonna delaminate. We're ready to glue it in. Before I do that, I kind of rolled that edge up because that's a veneer on plastic. And I'm gonna push this down on the edge. Are you napping a plastic corn? I'm napping a plastic medallion. I'm flint napping a plastic medallion. The Indians, they had skills, but could they nap a plastic medallion? Still a pretty tight fit. But I want it to be pretty tight because I don't trust just the glue. I want a little bit of a compression fit. Now we're going to square this up. That looks good. Now what I'm going to do is very gently take my napping tool. Press that again. It went in beautifully. Look at that. Try this. That makes me so nervous. I mean, it's nearly perfect, but. I mean, it really is nearly perfect. That's good. Here it is. It's finished. I'm. I'm really happy with it. It turned out beautiful. I made it center shot. I radius the the shelf. I radiused the side plate. I recarved the grip. I polished up the stabilizer bushing and put that in there. Cleaned it all up. Managed to leave the decals on. That was a big job in itself. Of course, we found out that this medallion is plastic, which I. I didn't even know that. I didn't even know Bear archery had plastic medallions. A lot bigger job than I thought it would be, to be honest with you. But it's. It turned out very beautiful. I'm real happy with it. And it's a. It's a sweet little bow now, so I hope he's happy with it. And we'll catch you next time. Thanks for watching.