Thrift store bow

Haven't made a post for a while so I figured I'd make one about my new bow. Picked up this bow from a thrift store a few weeks ago with hopes of converting it into a recurve. It's a Bear Kodiak Magnum compound bow, probably from the late 1970s to early 1980s. 

Sorry for the out of focus pic. Hey, at least my socks are clean!

I did a lot of research and quickly realized that I do not have the tools and know how to attempt such a conversion (yet). Took it to my local archery shop and had them remove the cables. (I figured just cutting them off on my own with a pair of snips might be a bad idea). Then, I contacted a user on a forum I frequent called Trad Talk and began the process of having this bow converted to accept ILF (International Limb Fitting) limbs.

I sent off and quickly received the newly converted riser from user jondho and began refinishing it. It had a very nice and shiny varnish, but it was chipping away from years of neglect. Judging by the rust on all the hardware, this bow was left in the elements for quite a while.

Yeah, a little bit of rust and the bubbles are cracks in varnish. But did you see that price?

Riser with all varnish removed and ready for sanding.

 Put on several coats of stain and a few coats of semi-gloss polyurethane and here are the results.

Finished riser. So shiny!

Ordered some TradTech Blackmax limbs and this thing is shooting great! Took it to the same archery shop to buy a string and test her out. Fired one shot down the range and the arrow shot like a laser. The other compound guys at the range were in awe of this bow that I saved from the confines of a thrift store.

Really happy I sent it off for conversion and put in all the effort to make it look nice. Just have to mount the original Bear medallion. I'm going to clean it up first. It looks a lot nicer than in one of those previous pics. Hope you enjoyed reading about the process and seeing the pics, so until next time, I want to believe.

(Almost) Finished bow. Just need to remount Bear medallion. Also added some string silencers since this pic.