>>46275I now ventured into the world of fiberglass recurves. I asked around and concluded that the best way to make fiberglass bows to start out with (for me) is to make one from a kit. Bingham's bow kits are well regarded as good products, and I have had no trouble at all with them. I have made two so far, and am starting on a third. The process for a fiberglass bow is more involved. The kit provides an instructional video and documentation to make the process fairly straightforward, but technical skill is still required to a larger extent than the previous builds.
I started out with making the form. This will be used to form the limbs in an oven to set the epoxy. I bought a takedown kit, so I only have to make half a form. This was done with provided blueprints and plywood screwed together on a bandsaw. It is important to make sure the form is square, so I took the block over to a drill press mounted with a drum sander to make sure there would be no twist in the limb when it is made. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of this process.
Once that was made, I was able to build a heat box. The heat box is essentially a box with insulation and light bulbs, which is regulated by a temperature sensor to maintain a constant heat with which the epoxy will set. The limbs themselves are comprised of fiberglass, a layer of flat wood, a layer of tapered wood becoming thinner toward the ends of the bow, and another layer of fiberglass. These are expoxied, then put on the form which presses them against itself, squeezing out the excess epoxy and helping it set.
Pic related is the first finished recurve.
