$20 cp400 press....

Gabowman said:

Looks like you pretty much made it to fit your bow. Only one place to squeeze it?!? Oh yea, I see the hinges on bottom now. Thanks for the idea.

Click to expand...

Yah, made for just this bow, but minor changes ought to accomodate about any bow. Might press a Ravin but I don't know.
The CP400 has a pointed front end. These blocks and the osb form a pocket to contain it and keep it from moving. The osb is a little longer than needed to act as a sort of guide for the arms. The blue rope is to keep the crossbow vertical, but turns out not needed once some pressure is applied.

Haven't done this, don't need to now, but if I did it again, I'd take a close look at this.

You might have a set of these 3/4" pipe clamps already, but if you don't, you can get these at HFT for less than $12, BUT you might need 2, depending on the screw length. If you watched the Ravin press vid, you're probably already way ahead of me. Make some wooden jaw pads and press your bow. Probably need some tweaks here and there for different bows.
I have pipe clamps here, but these particular clamps are better because they are up on legs and allow uninterrupted movement of the crank. They also have holes to attach whatever form of pads you want to use for different bows.
If 1 set of clamps doesn't give enough compression, install another set and effectively double the compression. The set I have here only has about 2 1/2" of thread which is probably not enough, but 5" is probably sufficient.
https://www.harborfreight.com/3-4-quarter-inch-pipe-clamp-with-base-94053.html

Mo' pix

Be nice if I had mo' time to add mo' pix without posting again!

Yah, it works. Although I'm confident my idea for the pipe clamp press will work fine, the advantage to this design (though I haven't tried it) is that I think I'll be able to fully relax the limbs if I ever need to replace them. The pipe clamp press probably won't do that, but should replace strings and cables ok.

Well I got the string re-served, hadn't done any serving in a couple years, so I had to get up to speed, and I should do better next time.
I was plenty nervous putting that string back on, even had it coming off the back of the cam, but I caught it before I wasted a lot of time. Never changed a string on a dang wheelie crossbow before, always got rid of them before that happened. If I didn't have plans and purpose for THIS wheelie, it would be on its way down the road by now. Couldn't tell how many twists were in the string and the ata is 1/8" low but I'll make adjustments after a few shots.

Here's mine. It works for bows or crossbows. Just slide the one clamp up or down the pipe as needed to fit whatever you're working on. My clamp on the right was upside down when I snapped the photos, but you get the point. I used leather to pad the jaws.

I just made one yesterday with the Harbor Freight pipe clamp ($10) and a pipe from Lowe’s ($15). It worked.