Part 1 - DIY Black Hunter Rework - Budget Amazon Bow

What's up guys? So a while back we did a review on a Black Hunter recurve. We got some requests that people wanted to see how to rework them on their own and we're going to do a short video here just a couple things that you can do with basic tools. We have a Black Hunter longbow today. It's not a recurve. This one is by far in worse shape than the recurve we had. The fit and finish on this one is just absolutely horrendous. I mean there's ledges and overhangs and the limbs aren't tapered parallel. They're not straight. I believe it's a 58 inch. It doesn't say on the bow. It might actually say right there. That's some Chinese writing that I cannot read. But I was looking at it and on this bow if there's tapers they're very very slight. I don't I don't even know if this thing's tapered. It doesn't. It might be tapered just a little bit in the limb core but very slight on this one. Much much less than the recurve was. So let's go take it out to the shop and fling some arrows. We're going to just measure the weight quick on it and see what we're at. It is marked at 50 pounds at 28 inches. I did get a digital scale but man I just I just like the dial scale better. I had it on for about a week but I just didn't like it very well. All right so we're sitting about at 53 pounds so it's about three pounds off. I've seen them worse. Most people do better with just a little bit of less poundage for sure if it's your first bow. But this one is actually 53 pounds instead of 50. It stacks pretty badly honestly. It's not that probably has to do with being such a short long bow and back mounted limbs. So your handle is not pushed very far forward on the bow. So it stacks quite significantly. Not bad. I expected it to be fairly fast simply because my draw is 29 inches and with it being so short and I could feel it stacking up on me. Basically you're just stretching everything out. You don't have a lot of working limb. This bow would probably be better suited for about a 27 inch draw instead of a 29. Very loud. Significantly louder than I would expect from a longbow. Most of the time longbows are much quieter than recurves without silencers. There's no silencers on this of course but I expected it to be quieter. Let me check the straightness just real quick. It's not too bad. The upper limb is off more than the bottom limb but definitely not enough to ever worry about. Let me check the tiller on it real quickly. On the top limb we've got about seven and an eighth. On the bottom limb we've got six and three quarters so the tiller is off by a quarter inch. So this surprisingly this longbow is much closer to center shot than the recurve was that we worked but we'll move it over just a little bit more. The methods that we'll show you, you can use on the recurves or honestly any bow. I did notice also on this bow they put this felt on. The felt on this particular one is cut very poorly. It's not it's not shaped well at all. In fact it's hanging over the edges of the riser. That would be a simple fix also. This is a great little workbench idea. If you got a vice and a this doing it this way allows you to get to all sides of it if you're working on a smaller project like a bow. We're going to grab one of these quick clamps and pick these up anywhere. These of course have the rubber on them so you're not going to damage your your bow. I wouldn't use a c-clamp on this here. Normally if the riser's not finished we would use one of these because this is way more power here but with this situation we don't really want to damage the riser too much. We want to use a quick clamp and it'll be enough for us. So what you're going to do now just get you a rat tail file. You can buy these without the handle or this is just a quarter inch rat tail file. You can buy these without the orange handle or with it. If you buy them without you can make your own handle with with wood or you can actually buy these orange ones that you just pound it into that and you've got a handle. So what we're going to do is we're just going to radius right here. We're going to we're going to radius that out with this rat tail and dig it deeper. Now this is kind of your guide mark your guideline here. So you're going to set your parameters with this first step. You're going to come in here and however deep you go with this rat tail it's very very simple. All you're going to do is just remove the material up into to that first layer or that depth that you created with the rat tail file. So we've got a pretty nice radius there. You could actually use a bigger one too. Either size would work. We're going to use the quarter inch here today. So we're just going to come in here like this and first we're going to set our depth right at the high point of the shelf and then we can because once we have that depth set we can float everything to that location and you can go cautiously so you don't mess it up. So I know I want to be deeper than that and while you're doing this you pay attention that you don't cut into the shelf because it's kind of hard to get that out because you've got to remove all this material to get that out if you cut this way into the shelf. So we're just going to I'm basically cutting straight down and 90 degrees to that shelf at this point. So I know that this one doesn't need to go that far to make it center shot. That's about as far as I want to go. What I can do now is just take my tape hook it under here and just look at where that how far I've cut at the deepest point of my radius there and so what I want to be at here is about 5.8. That's perfectly at 5.8. That's as deep as I want to go. So now all you do is just extend it both sides and just make it the same depth and that way it will maintain the same radius of the side plate which is important because removing this material here and here is what allows the arrow to have just minimal contact right in the center there or above the webbing of your hand. So now we're just going to extend that on out. So when you make a center shot bow what you're essentially what you're doing is wherever the string falls on your bow which it should be in the center if your limbs are straight it's going to be in the center of the arrow and the arrow is not going to be moved over by this side plate. When the side plate moves that arrow over you have to adjust when you're shooting your bow if you're right-handed you've got to adjust to the right if you're left-handed you got to adjust to the left to get that arrow to go straight into where you're looking at in the target. With a center shot bow if you wanted to and you shoot three fingers under you can put it right under your eye sight right down the arrow point at like 15 yards it's going to go right where you're looking. You're just going to be able to sight right down it. So that's the reason for a center shot bow. Some people have gotten used to shooting a bow that's not center shot or cut to center and for them at that point if they were to make it center shot it would probably throw them off but if you're new and starting out you're probably going to want more of a center shot bow it's just easier to get more accurate quicker. That's pretty much all we need to go here. I got into that a little bit but that's that's perfectly fine. So now you can see I've basically created the same depth all the way around here and you're done with the rat tail file. Here's next tool you'll need. This is a half round bastard file. This is the coarse cut. I only buy the coarse cut for this here step because it removes material material faster. Any cut will work it just might take a little bit longer. The half round is really important because when you're coming up to this here shelf you don't want this to be a square file because you you run into your your shelf so you that half round makes that just a thin edge so you don't get into it. So now what we're going to do is just take this down. Now when we're doing this we really don't want to hit right here where it's going up. We can take it off a little bit but we don't want to dig a hole here that we later have to carve and carve away to get out. So maybe just a little more relief not quite as much pressure on this opposite side here. So we'll start here and being conscious to not hit that shelf a file only cuts in one direction. You push a file and that's the way it cuts unless you're used to pulling it but you can see it comes off very quickly. Basically we're just going to maintain that first index that we we created with the rat tail and we're just floating this side material into that index hole that we created with the rat tail. You do have to take it off enough to where you don't just have a slanted point right into there. You do need to take enough off as parallel as you can. On the Black Hunter what's nice is you've got these lines. These lines can help you file. It's just the grain of the wood. They can help you get it pretty straight. Down here it's pretty much flat. It's just it's kind of like the concentric lines on an altitude map in the mountains and you can see as they as they go up they get tighter tighter tighter. So if you want this whole area flat it's just like chasing the grain on a self bow. You just maintain the same width of those of that grain as far back as you want to go. I'm going to take it back to maybe like right here and then we're going to start floating up. So you can see I can I can keep these the same distance apart and I know that's perfectly flat. You can't do that on solid wood risers as much but on this one I can actually use that to my advantage. This is very simple though. Anybody should be able to do this with a vice and some basic files. I'm just floating this out as I get into this swell here. Basically I'm floating this out to smooth. I don't want to dig any gouges in here with my file. So because I've removed material here and so that's going to change the the way that this here slope here approaches this. So if I didn't remove any at all here then you would have kind of a flat and then abrupt. So I don't want that. So that's what I'm doing. I'm floating that all together. Just take your time. Okay so that right there is all the file work you need to do. Now we got to clean that up. So most guys are not going to have pneumatic sanders like these. You can buy these from Lee Valley Tools. Normally I would use this and clean this all up but because most people won't have one of these I'm not going to use it. I'm going to grab one of these rubber deals. Probably most people won't have these either but if you don't have one you could just make you one. Just cut a wedge out of a block of wood or something and you don't have to use one of these either. You could just fold some sandpaper over and do it but if you want to just cut you a block of wood or you could just get a gigantic dowel and then just cut a triangle on one side of it on the table saw. So we're going to go with 120 paper and then we're just going to clean up what we did. We're going to take out the deep scratches of the file. We're maintaining everything. All we're doing is taking out scratches. We've already done the shaping with our file. We're simply taking out the scratches that the file left and we want to maintain the integrity of that inside radius there. Like I've said in previous videos, anytime you have a sharp angle for sure on an inside radius, for sure on a bow, moisture can leave that area quicker. So you want to have it rounded out and then it's a lot more stable. A sharp inside corner is weaker in any type of woodworking and a sharp outside corner is very weak because moisture leaves that a lot faster than if it's rounded over. Wood is like a sponge so regardless of the sealer you put on it, it will take on its environment over a period of time. If you do a good high quality sealer of course it takes longer for it to take on the environment and so by the time it takes it on it's stable enough and it doesn't split or crack out. So a good high quality finish is of course paramount to longevity of woodworking projects. Right now I'm just shaping it, making it look good. Anything that I'm rounding this over. I don't want any sharp edges for sure on the outside of this either. So I'm just kind of shaping the whole thing and as you do this with files or sandpaper, anything, the whole time you're can be shaping. Like I said I'm taking scratches out but if I see anything I'll shape that while I'm doing it. Okay so that looks really good. That's the 120 paper for you. Next we're going to grab a random orbit. I would imagine most guys have one of these. If you don't have one they're very inexpensive. You can get one for 50 or 100 dollars pretty much from anywhere. You don't want to get one of the ones that have a real stiff or hard pad. You need that. You need that flex and DeWalt, Makita, most manufacturers it comes with that. I'm going to start with 120 paper. What about the square bottom random orbits? They'll work. They'll work. They just don't work quite as well as the round ones. Now one thing we've got to be careful of here. If you're not going to fit your limbs you don't want to hit this edge because that's going to change your limb fitment. So I'm going to just kind of keep that side up as I sand. Okay with 120 paper that's really all it takes. So you can see I stayed off of there. I brushed that with my file a couple times. If you're really really careful you won't do that. I did. It's not a big deal but so we're moving on to finish paper now. You can finish this with 220 and it'll be plenty good for any sort of spray finish that you put on it. So now we're just going to repeat the step we did with 120 and after we do this it'll be finished. It'll be ready. So now I'm going to come in here and if you've got grain you want to try to sand with the grain of course. You don't really want to sand against the grain or crosswise or anything. So now I'm going to come up here and I'm going to carefully take out those file marks that I put in there. It won't take too much. The finish that's put on the Black Hunters is not super hard so it'll it should sand pretty good. Now if you look real close here you can see that the integrity of that edge it's still virgin finish right there. That's what you want to see. You don't want to take that off because then you're going to change the fitment of your limbs. So when I get to this point I'm going to switch over to to just using a piece that I folded three times because I have a little more control with that when I get up in here. And we come here and just stay off that edge go right up to it but stay off of it. Take out any cross scratches that we may have put in there and that's it. That bow has been made center shot. To make it center shot you want to take into account whatever side plate you're using. If the thickness of that and half the arrow diameter. Right now we're sitting at about an inch and five eighths. I moved this over to just five eighths. By the time we put our side plate on there that will be a center shot bow with the arrow diameter that we use and the side plates that we use. Very very simple and that's how you make it a center shot bow. We've made it center shot and we're now going to show you how to adjust the tiller on this bow. First of all you're going to measure your tiller. So you want to be in the location within a quarter inch of where the fade out of the wedge is. This is this is called the wedge and this is where it fades out into the limb. I can see it ends about right there. You want to be within a quarter inch of where that fades out. So let's just make a little mark here at 18 and a quarter. You just do one side and you make the other one exactly the same. So you find where you're going to make it on the one side. We decided we're going to go 18 and a quarter and then you go 18 and a quarter from this side. Okay now gently put your tape up against the string. You don't want to move that that string over. So we're going to measure and we've got seven and one eighth of an inch on the top limb. I like to tiller bows at one eighth of an inch difference between the top and the bottom. The reason for the tiller is that you're adjusting the limbs so that when the string is released the limbs hit the bottom of the string stroke at exactly the same time. So you've got an even force pushing the arrow. If one of the limbs hits the bottom of the string stroke before the other that string will go like that and you'll have a porpoise effect which will in turn make your arrow porpoise. Over here we've got seven and an eight and over here we've got just over six and three quarter about six and thirteen sixteenths. So that is telling me that my bottom limb is too strong. So we need to take material off the bottom limb. To check the straightness of it you when you eye down it with one eye closed on a longbow you're going to center this string right in the center here where the riser meets the limb. After you have it centered then you look at this limb and see where it is in relation to the string. That will tell you which side of the limb you're going to take material off. When I look down this and I center the string on that limb down there and then I look up here I've got more material here. So I can see there's a little jut out here. I'm going to take it off right at that point. So you can look down there see where that jut out is just make a mark there. So not only will will I be weakening this limb but I will also be straightening it at the same time. Now if you look down here and you've got the same amount of material on either side of the string and your limb is straight then you're going to want to take it off evenly off both sides. Now on the Black Hunter we don't we don't really want to take it off the the belly and the back simply because they paint these limbs and you'll be removing that paint and there's a risk of making it look funny. So we're going to take it off the sides. Now this vise has rubber jaws that I that we put on all of our vises. If you don't have rubber jaws you can just stick a sweatshirt in here something real bulky to protect your bow. I'm not going to clamp it super tight we don't want to crush the wood but tight enough to hold it for us. I'm going to show you how to do this with hand sandpaper. We don't necessarily use hand sandpaper but I mean we do but not not in this capacity. So what we're going to do is we're just going to fold this three times just like this this will work it might take a little bit longer it'll be a lot safer than doing it with power tools. We're just going to come along here I can see this is the side I want to take off of and I'm just going to start taking material. You want to make sure you have even strokes. If you have a little bit of limb that's kind of jutting out which I do right here take a little bit more off there as you go you can just step back and look at it see what you're doing. So that has already made a huge difference in the way this limb looks as far as straightness. I'm going to stop right there and I'm going to go ahead and look at my tiller again. There's my mark that I made so I moved it already a 16th of an inch so see how easy that was to move it a 16th of an inch not a big deal. Let's go look at it here. Okay so before we had about seven and eight now we have about seven and sixteen. A lot of times if you move one limb the other one moves too when you're doing this. So we don't even have that far to go to get it perfectly tillered. So let's take a little bit more off step back and look at it looks real good and it's straightening that limb as I'm doing it too. So we want to stop just a little bit before we get to where we're happy with the tiller and the reason we're going to do that is we'll switch to 220 paper and we'll take out the 120 scratches and then we've got a finished surface. So let's go just a little bit more because I know that wasn't enough. Keep in mind this is your top limb. This limb needs to be weaker. We moved it a little bit more. Don't get discouraged if you measure one of them and it didn't move. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes just one limb will move. So we moved it about a 16th that time which looks like a 32nd on a tape on both of the limbs moved to 32nd. So I love how it's straightening that up so beautifully. I wish I could do it to that side but it's not quite straight yet. So I'm going to go ahead and keep doing it some more. You want to keep this pretty flat as you go. It's not critical but you're going to around that like I mentioned before on these Black Hunters these limbs are painted. So if you don't want to spend a lot of time refinishing the surface of your limb the flatter you go the less scratches you're going to put into that finish. So now we should have a pretty sharp point on here which we do and that tells me that I've kept my paper really flat. If this was rounded over then I wouldn't have kept it flat. So we're about a 7 and a 16th there. We need to go another 16th. We really straighten that limb but I could use just a little bit more off of this side that I've been working on. I'm going to get a new piece of paper because I don't like to sand and sand forever and not get anywhere. All right here we go again. I'm going to put a little bit more pressure on just so we can get get done here. We should be nearly perfect at that after that sand. Okay we got 6 and 15 16ths, 7 and a 16th. So that bow is tillered perfectly at this point and you can see I didn't put a single scratch in the surface of that limb. That doesn't even have to be refinished on that that whole limb. Now it's a good idea to refinish this anyway but I'm just going to gently ease that sharp corner I created and just slowly round around there real gentle. All I'm doing is taking out the 120 scratches just to make that a finish ready surface. Okay so now not only did I retiller it, I nearly straightened it perfect just by doing that. Very very simple. So let's take a look at it. So there we got about 6 and 15 16ths, 7 and a 16th. Perfectly tillered and now it's straight. That's all it takes to retiller your Black Hunter longbow. Now when we shoot this there's not going to be any arrow porpoise. Now if you have a particular style and you know the type of tiller you like on how much distance, how much weaker the top limb is than the bottom limb, you can absolutely do that. You don't have to tiller it at an eighth inch. At Great Plains we tiller all of our bows at an eighth inch. They accommodate three under and split finger. We have yet to have anyone call us back and say their bow was tillered wrong when we tiller them at an eighth inch. It works perfectly. So far we've made this Black Hunter center shot, we've straightened it, we've tillered it. Thanks for watching.