On thing that continues to amaze me as I look at the work of bowyers on various forums and blogs is the creativity that some of them have. I don't think I have the imagination or creativity that some craftsman have, but I do admire all of their ideas. One idea I have always wanted to try is what I call a mirror-image mosaic riser pattern. The idea is to create two I-beam risers and then swap some section out of the middle between. When the riser window is opened up, it will create a cool-looking pattern to work with.
I thought it might be a fun project to do this with my son as a Christmas present. Since I don't have a nice bandsaw or arc jigs, I was not sure if I could pull it off, but I thought I would give it a shot anyway. I didn't take a lot of pictures as the build was going on, so most of these of finished pictures.
My son and I chose wood combos that we liked. We built one riser with Zebrawood sandwiched between layers of Wenge. The other riser contained Redheart between layers of grey Actionwood. My son wanted to use Bocote for the limbs, with walnut in the middle to keep it all dark-toned.
I have been wanting to try using a stain/tint on the limb wood, so I decided to use bamboo in my limbs. I found out that most stains will have a harmful effect on the smooth-on epoxy used to create these bows. From consulting with other bowyers I found that tinting agents that are water or alcohol based will not hurt the bonding power of the smooth-on, if applied correctly. So, I found some and was able to tint the bamboo lams with great success. This opens doors for future build ideas.
We also added some phenolic strips to the design for transition between layers. The finish is 25+ layers of Minwax Wipe-On Poly, which gives it a nice, deep gloss look.
These pictures show the tinted bamboo on my limbs and Bocote on my son's limbs.
Here are the tips and full length pictures. I tried to make some fancy-shaped tips, but they didn't come out quite as nice as I wanted. It was still worth trying.
Here are my bow stats:
- target stats: 65" AMO, 55# @28", 2" wide limbs
- achieved stats: 53#
- .040" ULS black glass for the back
- .043" UL clear black glass for the belly
- .076" natural actionboo lams for back
- .105" natural actionboo tapered lams for belly (dyed gray)
- .264" total stack height:
- riser: 2 x 3 x 26" [charcoal Actionwood,redheart,zebra,wenge]
Here are the stats for my son's bow:
- target stats: 65" AMO, 45# @28", 2" wide limbs
- achieved stats: 45#
- .040" ULS black glass for the back
- .043" UL clear black glass for the belly
- .070" Walnut parallel lams for back
- .100" Bocote tapered lams for belly (taper: .002/1")
- .253" total stack height:
- riser: 2 x 3 x 26" [charcoal Actionwood,redheart,zebra,wenge]
