need help for friend on bear alaska bow

gibblet · 02-24-2005, 12:40 PM

its a trip! left handed, wheel cam or cams, steel cable(s). its a 29" draw.

i'll post pics when i get home.

he wants to know if there are other cams we could switch to to get him some more zip. bear cams or cams by any other company we could get to work would do.

anyone with experience with bear bows, i would really appreciate any input you could give me.

pah · 02-24-2005, 08:17 PM

Steel cables? I havn't seen any bows built with them in a long time, probably 15yrs. I don't think that I would try to get to much zip out of that one its liable to come apart on you. Does it have those metal brackets on it that hold the cams? If it does its real old.

bigbulls · 02-24-2005, 08:24 PM

It's not worth it.

If he were to get new cams put on it he would then have to have custom length strings and steel cables made for it, then he would possibly have to have a different set of limbs put on it in order to get the correct poundage and I doubt that you would be able to find limbs for a bow of this age. And then pay someone to put it all together.

All in all he could end up spending enough money to just go ahead and buy a new bow to begin with.

buckeye · 02-24-2005, 08:31 PM

To add to what bigbulls said I can see it ending up with someone getting hurt trying to fire the bow. For sure the bow was not designed to handle the extra power you want to put into it.

Be safe and just have him buy a different bow.

gibblet · 02-25-2005, 03:49 AM

thanks for the info guys. i'd build him the string and change the stuff. i'll put some pic's on here later today and maybe we can figure out how old it is. he was thinking it was a late '90's. the round cams look like my neighbor's old freedom cams from his 12 yr old hoyt. its a 60#'er and has a pretty nice draw cycle with a sponged out wall.

BGfisher · 02-25-2005, 03:24 PM

The Alaskan was one of Bear's first compound bows. Came out in the 70's and may have been built in the 80's but I don't think so. You don't say, but it should have wood/glass laminated limbs. Man, don't you be building any strings out of Fast Flight or any other new stuff. These bows were designed for B50 or Dacron, and won't ake the punishment of the new No-Stratch material.

If you search around you'll probably find that in good shape it may be worth more as a collector's item than anything..