Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Bowhunting How to build a laminated bow

I'm in the home stretch now. The finish on the bow is now hardened. I have the first half dozen shafts fletched, I gave the bow a good rub down with OOOO steel wool to take off the shine and I made the rug rest and strike plate.

For the strike plate, I used 2-3 Oz. leather and for the rug, I used the fuzzy side of some adhesive backed Velcro strip I had laying around.



The leather was from some scrap I had so I needed to add some double sided tape to make it stay on the riser.



Then I spent a little time adding a leather grip to the longbow. The finished wood was very slick and needed some texture. I started with a piece of 4 Oz. tooling leather and got it good and wet so I could form it to the shape of the grip. The wet leather is on the right. I gets much darker when you wet it.



While it's wet, it can be formed and shaped and stretched to fit the contour of the riser. Once I had it shaped, I used a blow dryer to dry it off.





So far during this build along, I have been pretty good about taking pictures of each step. Until now. I must be getting tired because I did a bunch of stamping and tooling on the leather but forgot to get pictures of the process. After stamping and cutting the leather to it's final size, I punched some lacing holes. I then applied a coat of rubber cement to both the inside of the leather and the bow's riser.



After lacing, I gave the leather a coat of Neats foot oil to restore the oils lost during the working of the leather and from blow drying. The oil makes the leather even darker. Now, you can see the tooling and stamping I forgot to take pictures of earlier.

[img]http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c239/212007154/josh%20bow/grip5-1.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c239/212007154/josh%20bow/grip6-1.jpg[/img]

Then I took it outside for a picture in natural light.

[img]http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c239/212007154/josh%20bow/grip7-1.jpg[/img]