New Toy...

[Onebowonder]

A buddy of mine does some welding and he put this together for me.  I just hunted up some pictures online and guessed at the measurements that ought to work.  I'm hoping this makes working rough staves down to manageable bow blanks a bit easier.  I still need to make some wedges for it, and come up with some kind of gripping pads for the bottom of the plate and the floor of the press.

OneBow

[Knoll]

I recall that missilemaster has made some of these.

[osage outlaw]

You will love it.  Cut some small blocks of wood different thicknesses to keep you clamp plate level when you are holding a bow.  I drilled holes and inserted small rare earth magnets on my blocks of wood.  When I'm not using them they stick to the sides of it and I don't lose them.

[JonW]

Pretty sweet Eric. I will bring about 50 staves next weekend so you can chase 'em down for me.

[bubby]

Looks good, when i built mine i just cut some old mudflaps and glued them one for the pads

[Onebowonder]

You will love it.  Cut some small blocks of wood different thicknesses to keep you clamp plate level when you are holding a bow.  I drilled holes and inserted small rare earth magnets on my blocks of wood.  When I'm not using them they stick to the sides of it and I don't lose them.

Do you have any pix of how you do this?  That part about inserting small blocks of wood is still uncertain to me.  I've mostly seen these used with rough split staves before, and I am not certain how to make it work with a bow blank once you get to the tillering or details phase of the project. 

...I really like the rare earth magnets idea.  I'm forever misplacing such pieces if I don't have a means to coral them!

OneBow

[blackhawk]

Looks like your new best friend....youll figure it out..i have shims from half inch to 4" to match the corresponding height of whatever i stick in it to keep the plate level...works really well even with big pie shaped staves when ya chase the ring

[osage outlaw]

I don't use mine until I get the bow roughed out.  It's great to use during tillering.  Cody made mine for me.




I have several different thicknesses of spacers.  I stack two of them up if I want to clamp a bow in the thick handle area.  The spacers keep the clamp pad level and reduces the stress on the ball joint area.  I just drilled a hole in them and used epoxy to hold the magnets in.  The little magnets are powerful.

[osage outlaw]

You can glue leather to the bottom of the vice and the bottom of the clamp plate to keep it from denting the bow.

[DavidV]

I bet that works great Eric, what are you going to mount it to?

[E. Jensen]

Great idea!!

[hedgehog]

I made two of these today. I love them. Thanks for posting this. building two more for my son in KC next weekend.

[Knoll]

Did Cody make some that clamp to bench/table/etc or were the ones I saw at Marshall attached to 2x and then 2x clamped to table?

[Onebowonder]

I bet that works great Eric, what are you going to mount it to?

That is actually a very good question!  I have four holes cut in the bottom of the box steel and had planed to run bolts thru those and then thru the ramp on my bench that I usually put the smaller vice on.  I had also considered mounting this one to the top of a post sunk into the ground in the yard.

However; I'm kinda re-thinking those ideas.  I may need to contrive a swivel plate of some kind to mount the stave press upon as it may be desirable to be able to change the direction of the vice.  I've been 'Imagineering' that all weekend.


OneBow

[J05H]

I got the fancy retail version. I think they work best on a post. That's how mine is mounted. Mine has a pipe welded to the bottom of the box and a separate base plate with a slightly smaller pipe on it. The pipe on the press slides over the pipe on the base plate and a couple of bolts act as set screws to hold it in place. It works pretty well that way.