Hey guys, thanks for joining me today.
We're building a three-piece wood
takedown bow. This is another part in
the series. Let's get right into it. I
feel like I've pitched this stuff
enough, but I know new people come, so I
wrote a how-to book of how to build this
bow if you're interested and also have a
kit on it. You can check the other
videos for more information. What other
videos, Kramer? Well, there's a playlist
in the description that has all of these
videos in it. I'm going to do like a six
or seven video series on this bow and
check that out. You might like And one
thing you may not know about the
playlist is that I um schedule videos in
advance for the future. So you go check
that playlist, it's an unlisted video,
but it's still in that playlist a lot of
times. So you might be able to watch
videos that haven't even become public
yet. So there'll be zero views or five
views on the video, but it's free for
you to watch if you want to go check it
out on the playlist.
Limb bolts are on and everything. And I
actually just filmed an entire section
and scrapped it because I wanted to show
you what you're probably or potentially
going to run into. So, I purposefully
created a problem. So, now that our limb
bolts are in, what we want to do is see
how straight our limbs are. And lots of
times I'll grab a string
chalk line here, but using it just as a
string. And you can go from center to
center. And it's very obvious that this
limb is like half an inch further that
way than it needs to be. Don't know if
you can pick that up through the camera,
but this needs to be shifted this way.
You want the string to be right in the
middle of the bow. And this is a problem
I encountered all the time when I
started doing three-piece bows. So, let
me show you how to fix it. It's actually
a pretty easy fix and it also doesn't
hurt the bow at all. So, that's why I
wanted this pin easy to pull out. Boom.
What we need to do is change the
location of the pinhole. And by change
the location, I mean move the hole
1/16th of an inch to the right. I've got
a cut off from the riser. We'll do this
with
reason we can do this is because it's a
locator pin. It's not structural. So, we
just need to move it so that the limbs
locate every single time and are
straight. Additionally, I'm going to put
felt to cover up where the old hole is.
I do a piece like this. It has a nice
taper and it is kind of cone shaped.
Just a dowel, but that'll allow a really
tight fit. You could drop it in with
wood glue, but for a quicker turnaround
time, I'll use some CA glue and
accelerator.
So, CA glue into the hole. And then I'll
put accelerator on this piece. Now, if
you want to be particular, you can line
up the grain the same way so it'll blend
in even better.
See, I sanded the top flat. And there we
go. That's it. Now, that accelerator
takes 10 seconds to set up.
And by using a piece of this same riser,
one of the cut offs, you can hardly see
it's there. Now, I know I need to move
it to the right slightly. So, something
shifted. I didn't get it lined up
properly. Use a little scratch all to
pin exactly the spot I want. The
interesting thing is you're going to be
cutting out most of this dowel, but just
a slight bit off to the side.
Now, if you take a close look at this,
you can see the tiny little bit of dowel
that's still in there. But now, this
should adjust the limb to be straight.
In less than 10 minutes, we fixed that.
And that used to be like the biggest
stressor with three-piece takedowns is
not getting this perfectly aligned. Now,
there's something you could potentially
run into depending on how you shape your
riser, and that is that there's a gap
between the riser and the limb, and
that's because they're interfering with
each other. So, what I do is I round
over the limb or the riser. You can do
either one to make them fit. It's
generally just on that corner that can
make this problem, but your alignment
can look off if this is off. So, double
check that. Round it over on a sander if
you need to. Now, from this point, I'll
mark the center of each limb. Then I'll
measure quarter inch on either side
because we're doing a continuous taper
from a half inch all the way down to one
and a half inches at the handle. After
you sand off or cut off the excess, you
have a really straight bow that is nice,
perfectly continuously tapered. There
is, however, a couple nuances to this.
With this bow build, we glued the limbs
up square, like um full size rather than
pre-tapered. You see this one here is
pre-tapered. The nice thing of leaving
them wide is even if your alignment is
just like slightly off, you might have
enough width to still get a straight
limb and you'll just cut a little bit
less off of one taper than the other. If
you did a pre-taper like this, so it's
tapered before you've done hardware,
then it needs to be even more precise.
To taper the limbs, a band saw works
really quickly and really nicely. Doing
it on a belt sander might even be safer.
It'll take longer, but less chance of
you messing up. The key with a taper is
that you take extra time to make your
marks on the back of the bow. And then
when you're cutting it or sanding it
out, you know whether you're going to
your line or beyond your line. You see,
if this is my bow limb and I'm marking
my taper out, what some people don't
realize is that a Sharpie line's about
1/10th of an inch. So that means 2/10 of
an inch or 1/5 when you multiply that by
two. So, if you marked with a Sharpie
and you haven't decided where you've
marked, you could be 2/10 of an inch off
by removing material. Cuz if you remove
material up to the line, it's going to
be different than if you remove the
line. So, just plan ahead when you're
marking out your bow, whether you're
going to the line or cutting through the
line. I used to do trim carpentry, and
different people did it different ways.
I think the cleanest look is to be able
to set it up so you remove the line. I
think that's visually I think visually
that's easier and then you don't have
any marks left on your piece after the
fact. If you mark it out with a pen or
pencil, it's going to be much smaller of
a line, but you can still be nearly up
to a tenth of an inch off without
knowing how you're cutting it out. So
once it's tapered, it should look
something like this. The limbs are
tapered. They're on the riser.
