DIY BOW PRESS - HOW TO BUILD A BOW PRESS

Alright if you're watching this you're like me you were too cheap to go spend 400 500 up to a thousand dollars to purchase a press and a draw board system so I'm gonna do the best that I can go as detailed as I can on how I built this and What it entailed this one will be just for the press I'm gonna do another one breaking down the draw board. So this will be two parts We'll get into the measurements how I did everything What I learned what I did done different all that good stuff So let's break down materials what you'll need real fast This is not the gospel you can change this You can do it. However you want. This is how I did it This is the way that I think it'd be easiest to do it. So you're gonna need two foot two inch Square tubing now wall thickness is going to depend on the next piece So two foot of two inch square tubing Then you're gonna need either inch and a half or inch and three quarter Square tubing whatever slides into the two inch and leaves the least amount of wiggle room You're gonna need five foot of that smaller square tubing. That's gonna be for your slide for your finger Uprights and then for your legs, so five foot of that Okay, and you're gonna need two foot of two inch flat bar again thickness on this Really doesn't matter. This is three sixteenths Eighth inch would be fine. That is gonna be used for this piece for your clamp It's gonna be used to weld in on the back side of Your square tubing for your nut here and then for your handle on the other side and it's also used For your finger brackets here and here Okay, you're gonna need three foot of either half inch or three quarter inch square stock Okay, you're gonna need a foot of Some cold roll whatever size you want to use for your fingers You guys use half inch some of you seven sixteenths Whatever you can find for this piece here Okay, you're gonna need three foot of all thread in either five eighths or three quarters. You can use fine thread I Don't see a big change So three foot of all thread with three nuts that correspond to that all thread You're gonna put two nuts back in here a jam nut set up and then one in here for your slider Okay, the last piece of the puzzle is your handle You can get creative with that I used a simple bolt and some flat bar and all We'll get into that here in a second, but those are pretty much the material that you see here There is two optional pieces One is the bearing in the handle and the other or the sheet metal tabs that keep the fingers upright There are some other ways that I've messed around with to get that to work But if you want to buy some like 18 gauge sheet metal you can do that for this as well So let's break it down even further and we'll get into each individual part. So with your two inch square tubing You need 24 inches, okay, that's gonna serve as your main body for the bites Okay, so that brings us to our slide piece. So our main body and we go to our slide This is gonna be the inch and three quarter inch and a half Whatever you found fits into your two inch with minimal play. There's two ways of doing this one You can do it like I have here. We're over here at our outright. I 45 did okay That's option one option two would be to just butt weld it on Either way, you're looking at 26 inches here Okay, so you want your slide piece to be 26 inches what that allows is Minimal space with storage when you suck this slide all the way in you're only looking at 26 inches of length here Versus you know up to 4 foot. So we've got our main body cut. We've got our slide cut For our finger outrights those are gonna be six inches on this side and They're gonna be six inches on this side Now if you run your 45 like I did here You're gonna have to measure and it's gonna be longer than six inches on one side. You butt weld it six inches six inches Okay our legs These are 10 inches. You can play around with those. Those don't have to be 10. That's just what I have here. So we have 24 inches for our main body. We have 26 inches for our slide We have 6 inches for both of our outrights and we have 10 inches for our legs Then we have 21 and a half inches for our 2 inch flat bar Again, you can play around with this number For wherever will you want your legs to sit? You've got your bolt and your handle And then I've got six inches of that flat bar here for the handle to rotate on Okay. So the way this works is we've got all thread running all the way through So as I crank this handle It either moves slide in or out Okay this press will service bows out to 33 inches after that you're gonna have to Have to modify it a little bit and build it longer if you have a longer axle to axle like a 38 or 40 But up to 33 axle to axle this will work. Okay, so we got our main body First thing we're gonna do is take some 2 inch flat bar and we're gonna cap this in Okay After we get it capped Need to decide if you're gonna put a bearing in it or if you're just gonna use the all thread You're gonna put a bearing in it. You have to cut a hole big enough in your cap for the bearing to sit Not you need to drill a hole big enough for your all thread to fit Once we get that situated whether it be a bearing or just all thread We're gonna take and we're gonna run two nuts on the all thread Right here It's gonna act one's gonna act like a jam nut to the other Okay, so our all threads gonna slide through We're gonna have a nut and a jam nut and a washer for a wear plate against our cap That should leave us a little bit of all threads sticking out this side of our cap from there Just need to decide if you want to bolt your handle on or if you want to weld it on like I've done here Either way would work Or the handle all it is is some flat stock with the bolt through it and Then I actually put a little piece of pipe on here For rotation sake So that's this end so we've got our all thread coming through we've got two jam nuts a wear plate our cap And then it sticks through and attaches to our handle from there We're gonna build this piece Now I'm pretty much doing the same thing We did on the back side of the main part of our body to our slide piece so We're gonna take and weld that same cap Onto our inch and three-quarter or inch and a half piece of square tubing We're gonna drill a hole the same way we did before except this time we're gonna weld a nut on either the front or the back of Our tubing here and what that's gonna allow is for us to set On here and Then we can screw it in and this is gonna work itself in and out Based on the action of our handle on the other side of the vice Now we can weld on our six inch pieces of inch and three-quarter or inch and a half tubing to our main body and also our slide now I Offset this about two inches For my handle as it came around To make sure it didn't hit Okay, I don't want to put this all the way on the outer edge And then as this handle comes up and around we're running into wear issues here So I ran that about two inches in weld it at a perfect 90 And then we can move to our slide for our slide It's the same thing Again you can run it a 45 like I did or you can butt weld it in place Okay, now we're ready for our legs and our base so we have our 10 inches to 10 inch chunks of inch and a half or inch and three-quarter square tubing and then our 21 and a half inch section of two inch flat bar and you're just gonna weld those on And make sure they're just welded to the main body don't weld them on the slide Because then obviously it's not going to slide Okay, so we have our Outrights welded on Now we're ready for our finger bracket so all this is is that two inch flat bar and it's cut to the width of whatever Width the square tubing was so in my case. This was inch and three-quarter, so it should be about inch and three-quarter Okay, we're gonna weld that on So I came in two inches and welded it and made sure that it was square to the face And then also square to the main body. I did that on both sides So the slide side same thing came in two inches Made sure it was square on this side came in two inches making sure it was square I didn't drill my hole until I had my fingers built so that I can ensure that the fingers sat flat and sat Okay, so now we're ready to build our fingers and By far, this is the hardest part of this entire build. I Went through several different renditions of my fingers Before I finally landed on this the way I did it was I took my square stock and I Bent these so none of these are actually Cut they're all just bent so I came in an inch and I bent it to make the front part and Then I came down two inches and I bent it back the other way And then I came down to the bottom and I came an inch and a half in and bent that back So that's how I made these and then it's just shaping them how you want to shape the biggest part is You want them all to be uniform? There is a way to use a grinder and a welder And I will link that video, but essentially you set your stock up in a device You come in with your grinder And you just make cuts and you bend it over and then you take another cut and you bend it over Until you get the shape you're looking for Okay now There are a couple little optional pieces on here one being the screw in the back And all that allows this to do is kind of rotate in And out like that the other piece Is this little chunk of sheet metal on the bottom here and Basically that just allows the finger not to fall forward when it's on the vice now I didn't include the sheet metal in the Material list however You can use pop cans if you take pop cans and fold them over a Handful of times you know cut the tops off fold them over you can't accomplish the same thing You would just have to glue those in or screw them on here, but that's your finger They are by far the hardest part of this build And as you can see here. I just plasti-dipped the top part of the finger If you can figure this part out The rest of it is easy there is there are fingers available for Purchase on like eBay you can get a set of fingers cut off the CNC for like right around $100 That is another option So once we have our fingers built we're just about done Now we need to drill our holes for a cold roll so The way I did it was I took my fingers, okay? I wind them up until everything was Perfectly aligned, and I drilled my hole Then that allowed me to set the fingers down on Run them right up against the plate Market, and I can drill the hole in my plate Okay, now a little little tip that I did Since I only used one plate I Took my cold roll, and I actually took a punch, and I punched the cold roll all the way around And kind of made dimples so that when I slid it into my plate that locked it in place after that You're pretty much there So you slide your fingers on? Just like that So once we get our fingers Installed this is another one of those optional Choices these little screws. It's a quarter by 20 screw all I did was drill a hole And tap it basically all that allows me to do is Kind of suck these fingers down in place, and I get them to the width that I want So depending on what bow you have in the vise You have the ability to work those fingers Wider and narrower whatever you so just like that we have got bow press So again the hardest thing is going to be the fingers if you can get the fingers Everything figured out to where they're all even you'll be fine nothing about this is hard other than the fingers so Right now. I have my Matthews lift in it I'm going to crank it down just a little bit show you so strings tight I'm cranking and What will wind up happening? Is just like that My strings loose my cables are loose. I can work on this bow. However. I need to and then same thing going the other way And then same thing going the other way I Can unwind it? Until everything gets tight And then I can pull it out of the press Just like that yes, it will work With bows that don't have the lint pockets for the press so here. I have my wife's PSE in here Same thing I can crank it down until Strings loose cables are loose, and I can now work on this bow Okay, so that is the completed press Like I said nothing about it as hard the fingers are going to be the hardest part You can get those figured out the rest of its relatively easy You should be able to build this this press for Less than $100 like significantly less than $100 if you do decide to buy the fingers You know that's going to be your biggest your biggest charge so With that I'm going to make the actual draw board in the next video