We drove past a garage sale today, and I stopped when my son saw some tools for sale… I was hoping to find an old corded electric drill or disc sander, but ran across this instead…

It sure looks nice, what is the make/model? Or, if you are asking for that info, I do not know. Great find whatever it is!

I looked for labels to give me a hint as to what it is… This didn't really mean much to me

But this kind of got my attention…

This is the better of the two overlays

So as I said, I'm not sure what I've gotten myself into, but I figure this might be one of those things where there's really not much to lose, and I've kind of been keeping my eyes peeled for something in a lower poundage...

I could use a #40, couldn't we all?

LOL

But seriously… Did I find something worth more than it might cost to salvage it? And by "worth" I don't mean dollars, I mean shooting enjoyment versus the amount of effort it would take to get it into shooting condition...

Be nice if you could get it in shape. Good lookin bow.

Hope that YOU can RESTORE THE BOW! Keep us in the loop. Batman

That Bear Leathertop bolt on should sell for about 60 bucks. Almost certainly worth more than the bow.

DDave

GF, my advice is do 1 of 2 things.

1. Put that bow up on the rack and leave it about 3 months.

2. And this would be my choice, strip the finish off the bow, and hang it up on the rack for 30 - 45 days. Looks to me like that bow may have been in an attic, outbuilding, something for a while and it has kind of gotten dried out (at least that tip looks that way in the picture). You need to let it get rehydrated before you try to string it and shoot it.

Just my experience/opinion by the way.

So when you say strip the finish... what do you use for that?

I have NO idea how to go about this, so I'll take all the advice you guys will give me and probably ask for more before I'm half-way through... I just figured the bow looks so rough that nobody else in this town would be willing to give it a home...

Dave - I thought that quiver might actually be worth something, though it's more of a rubber-top than leather. It's really clean, although the foam under the hood is either missing or just really, really shot.

I actually am one of those oddballs that scrapes the finish off. I know lots of folks use chemical strippers, but I won't. I use my pocket knife.

And although I know it sounds difficult to believe, even on the glass you can tell where the finish ends and the glass begins. You can see it and feel it. Only thing to keep in mind is that we aren't whittling here, we're scraping. As long as you keep that front of mind you will be fine.

Make sure you record any writing (I like to take a picture) that you will be replacing when you get finished

That quiver looks to be in above average condition.

80 grit

DDave

Sandpaper it is!

No power tools, though, right?

Yeah, the quiver is in really nice shape - interesting design; I can see how it was intended to work with bleeders, though I think I'd probably stick with a 2-blade.

So.... Flightmaster? Did I just score myself a Drake???

It does have some pretty aggressive hooks on it, so it may be pretty fast if I can put it back together properly. What kind of blows my mind about it is that the grip is so petite; I really never owned a boat where the grip did not seem a couple sizes larger than my hand.

So now I'm actually looking forward to a nice, humid summer so that the wood on this thing can rehydrate and then maybe I can seal it before things cool off and the air dries out again…

Re hydration does seem really important. I would scrape and sand the finish off. Then follow that with steel wool.

Once cleaned up, I would hit it with some linseed oil and hang up for a week. I would repeat that for about a month, steel wool and reapply each time. Take the bow down every other day to flex.

After I was satisfied it was rehydrated, I would finish it with truoil. I would be really pretty while giving the bow a chance to not be dry as kindling. It may even end up a phenomenal shooter to boot!

Yes, scrape or sand, but go easy on the glass. You don't want to remove the gel coat.

I believe that is a Bruno Grecian bow. I used to live in Brooklyn, NY, a short walk from Coney Island. Bruno Bows was a custom bow shop there that I often visited. He also had a shooting gallery on the boardwalk where my dad bought me my first bow. A lemonwood longbow, 20#. His bows were often called such things as the Persian, Grecian, and other names of mideast or Asian countries. They were highly regarded in the 50's and he advertised in the Archery magazine back then. You should try to find a copy of an old Archery magazine from the late 50's or so and you can see his lineup of bows. I recognize that model.

GF, no power tools is correct.

Bill - that has to be it! We are so far down south in Connecticut that that bow could probably just about lob an arrow into New York from the very spot where I bought it! I have to say, though… When I saw the "flightmaster" sticker I was hoping for my very own Grail (LOL)

Maybe it's just as well, though, if this boat has no particular historical significance… That makes it even better qualified as a project piece...

Pretty sure I have a scraper around here somewhere, although I do have a supply of used-up saws all blades that might just fit the bill...

Yep a little bit of love and that will be an amazing bow. Looks great already. There are lots of follow alongs on here and tradgang. Keep us updated on it!

Msturm

Definitely a Bruno. Owned a Grecian along with a few of his other bows.

Watch that you don't end up with it blowing up in your face.

There's always an optimist around, isn't there?

LOL....

But I'm definitely going to have to do something with the limb- tip overlays...

This is the good one...

Bad one.

Probably plenty to be learned here!

What's really great, though, is that my son is refinishing/refurbishing an electric bass right now, so we are sort of in that mode. So I got to scraping, and I have to say, it went amazingly fast. So now, I think the bow is ready to rest up, rehydrate, and have something done about the tip overlays…

I wonder what length string it's going to want?

I haven't dared to bend it yet, though...

Soooo....

Just looking this over this evening..

I laid the bow on the air hockey table, on its side. 1 limb tip laid flat on the table, and the other was high enough off the surface that I could just sneak a pencil underneath. Flipped it over and got about the same thing, just swapped ends. Little more air under the high tip this time.

I ran some mason's line from tip to tip, and I could just about convince myself that it was running down the middle, but frankly, I think the lower limb is a few degrees off plumb...

How bad is it?

I would wait until you get it strung up to look over the limb tips. a lot of time you can correct them a few degrees by just bending it the other way and holding it for a few seconds. I had to do that on my 68 bear cub. It was about 10* out of alignment I would guess

Msturm.

Yeah, I kinda wonder if maybe it's suffering from being strung too many times using the step-through method....

I've seen a lot of mentions of "bumping" a limb back in line, but no clue what's involved beyond that quick description.

Meanwhile, I'm still allowing it to rehydrate. It's in the basement and I backed off on the dehumidifier so it won't come on 'til it hits 55%.

Kinda frustrated with myself, though - I was running some 400-grit over the exposed wood last night and a lot of the pores got filled up with dust, so I hit it with a tack cloth... and now it's feeling a little sticky. Tried buffing it out, and ended up just polishing up the "wax job"... which actually doesn't make for a lousy-looking finish, except for the sawdust mixed in....

Any recs on how to get rid of the tack-cloth residue would be appreciated... I figure it's only getting in the way of the rehydrating...

At some point, I guess I can start flexing it a little with the tip-to-tip bow stringer... Not rushing it, though (since I got ride of the old, crackled, cloudy finish) it actually looks like something you could string and not have blow up in your face.

My FIL always said that fiberglass just gets better with age, but he was talking about boats....

Jim was referring to the age of the glue and what happens to it. As you can see, one tip overlay already has unglued. Wear safety glasses when stringing and drawing and shooting it the first time. Not sure but I think mineral spirits will remove the tack cloth residue.

Min spits.... That, I've got! I'll give it a go.

As far as a scraper, use one of those wooden rulers with a brass edge embedded in it. It's an old trick for stripping varnish off of cane fly rods. The brass is softer than the cane and only removes the varnish. Here, even though the brass is probably harder than the wood of the bow, you still stand less chance of gouging it with the brass edge than you would using a hard steel scraper or knife blade.

Good thought....

I saw something on a guitar parts site about using a single-edge razor blade with scotch tape on the sides to make a scraper that will take a lump out of the finish slick as a trout....

Scotch tape is about 2 thousandths of an inch..... Just roll the edge on something hard to get a nice burr on one side...

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