Functional Art --- Archery From Snow Skis

On episode one, I turned this 100-pound bow into a beautiful 60-pound bow. And it's for sale at CranberryHammondsArchery.com. No one's picked it up yet, if you're interested. But my wall of bows is deceptive. It looks like I have a lot of bows, but most of these are not finished. They are prototypes, experiments, and unfinished masterpieces. It was for the sake of video production and business efficiency that many of these bows were abandoned when there was still lots of life left in them. In this brand new series, I will take a bow off the wall and rewrite its story. Welcome to episode two of Bows Reimagined. The bow we're completing today is a snowski bow. A fiberglass snowski bow. I built this bow originally in another video a few years ago. I found some snowskis at the Goodwill, and I turned them into this bow. So if you look up closely, the limbs are the snowski. Additionally, the handle is laminated snowski. The only thing that's not snowski is the takedown hardware and the bowstring. But what didn't I do with this bow? What do we need to do with this bow? It's very rough, first of all. No final sanding was done. The edges are pretty sharp. It also can use a fair amount of sanding. And with that, I didn't put a finish on it either. And I think having a really nice finish on this is going to make the colors pop so much more. The string groove needed to be reworked. It's just cutting into the bowstring the way it is now. And this string groove is so far off center. We need to fix that. I have way too many bows that are just sitting on the wall, or that are partially finished. And I'm cleaning out everything. That's awesome. And what I'd like to do is finish out some really good bows and sell them if any of you guys are interested. This one specifically is less of a functional bow. Maybe more of a art piece. Maybe more of a wall piece. With that, it does shoot and it shoots really smoothly. Check the draw weight. I'll use my jig to see how many pounds it takes to pull it full draw. With this one, my guess is probably like 10 pounds. Okay, 13 pounds. It does bend really nicely, but it's such a low draw weight because the core material is a softwood. It's some sort of pine or birch. And so what's really fascinating is you've got fiberglass on both sides with a little bit of that light wood in the center. And then the end here to create this rigid tip, there's inlaid a piece of metal, which is actually kind of unique to keep it that recurved shape. So when I originally made this, how the front of a ski recurves up so that it doesn't dig into snow, I use that part on the limb tips. So we get this really cool recurve bow. So let's take what we have right here and see what we can turn it into. First, we'll take the bow apart and start on the string grooves. I definitely was just reminded why I didn't cut these grooves in deeper or take time to make them too even. There's metal in here. That makes it so... It's going to take so much longer to file these in. But I want to take the time to get it to look well. So I'll take the time to file these in. bit of time here filing. You know, the more I'm working with this, I think this side is some sort of plastic PVC mix, and this side's fiberglass. And that would lead to the low draw weight for sure. But after working with this, this is definitely some sort of plastic, almost like a HDPE sort of material. All right, now the tip overlay is all cleaned up. Now let's sand the rest of this limb. I like to complete one piece of the bow at a time and then move on to the next. So basically we need to sand the sides. It's already roughed in, so I can use 180 and 220 grit. And we'll just clean it up. I'm going to use some acetone to get all these little glue marks off and old tape, stickers, that sort of stuff. That way we can have a really nice clean finish. As it is right now, these have to be threaded through. I don't like that. I don't like the bolts to have to be threaded. A lot of times I like to put a piece of the sandpaper through, and it'll kind of chamfer those edges nice and clean. Now when you put your bolt in, it goes right in. No play, but it doesn't have to be threaded. Both limbs are ready for a finish. Before we do that, let's clean up the riser. Then we'll marry these back together and make sure everything's flush. And then we'll put the finish on it. One of the things I was thinking about with this riser is how it's not, well, perfect. And I don't know if the ski wasn't wide enough. I don't remember specifically. Maybe I just did a bad glue up. Maybe I thought I was going to make thinner limbs, but we're just going to have to run with the character of this, where some pieces aren't going to be sanded flat because the glue up wasn't even or the piece was too small. Again, I don't remember. I think it can still look really cool. And with a really good finish on it, there won't be any exposed fiberglass or anything. So grabbing it won't be uncomfortable and get your hands itchy or something as it is now. But part of these places with the markings of the ski, I think look cool. I'm just going to clean it up the best I can and remind myself that it's the character of this that is making part of it cool rather than it being this most seamless, flawless looking thing. After all, this is primarily a piece of art. After working on the riser a little bit, my main objective is to create contrast between the different layers. So we have some fiberglass, plastic, metal, and then the wood. All of that from the snow ski. And what I'm trying to do is clean it up enough so that you get clear contrast between the different colors. I think that visually makes it much more appealing than here in the spots where it's just a big blob of colors with glue mixed in. So I'm not worried if it's all jagged and rigid and not perfectly together. But you look at this side, see that contrast? How much better that makes it look there. And then once we apply the finish, it'll make all that pop even more. It's actually looking good. 3D look. I'm now matching up the limbs just to make sure I didn't move too much with the sanding. That one looks good. Just putting it on the pen, lining the hole up. Yeah, it's looking good. I've been thinking about the finish a lot. Oh, I forgot. I was going to do one more thing. Correction. Two more things. First, I'm going to grab the polishing wheel. Because we got some of this metal poking through, I thought it'd be real cool to grab the polishing wheel or maybe like these little burnishing wheels and just smooth over that so you don't see any tool marks in the metal. Additionally, I just want to sign the bow and write the poundage on it. Let's do those two quick things and then we'll do the finish. Oh, that looks cool. I like that. I'm going to leave some of like the black paint mixed in with it. Just give it that extra character. I really like to use this little ink here with a fountain pen for the maker's mark. And I'll generally do like draw weight, draw length. But as a kid, I was diagnosed with severe dysgraphia. So this is an insecurity of mine. So let's see if I can overcome that insecurity a little bit more right now. I've been practicing for 20 years. So let's do pound 12 at 28 inches. Signature. I've been trying to think what type of finish would look best here because it's more likely that we want this to look good up on a wall as decoration than necessarily the durability of shooting it. I would like a little durability. That way it can get set down and not scratch or anything. But looks is the most important. So I think I'm going to do an oil polyurethane with a semi-warm tint to it. I think that warm tint is going to bring out this light colored wood really nicely, especially over time. It also is a semi-gloss. When I'm doing most finishes, I normally go with a flat finish, especially for hunting bows. You want to want any reflections off in the woods. Flat finish is the most common. But for this one to make everything pop a little bit more, I think the semi-gloss will be nice. Check it. I just made a bowstring out that'll match the blue on this bow really nicely. So here is the Snowski Bow reimagined. The number one purpose wasn't to necessarily shoot this bow, but let's take some shots for the fun of it. Because it's such a low draw weight, it's pretty easy to hit the target. There it is, a Snowski Bow. I'll put this on my website for a few hundred dollars if one of you guys are interested. There's also some merch up there. And sign up for my email list because I'm releasing my first bow making book here soon in the next couple months. So you'll want to be on that list so you know that's coming. This is a pretty cool bow. I love making bows. If you want to see me make more bows, learn how to make bows, or want some of the bows I make, stick around because more is coming very soon. To all the new people, thanks for joining me. My name is Kramer Ammons. I forget so many of you, 90-ish percent, brand new people to watch my videos. So it's such an honor, such a pleasure. I really appreciate it. I'll see you guys on the next video.