So, you've got your trusty Axis, but you're either sick of pushing the bushes out whenever you want to try new limbs, or you can't get any more limb adaptor kits. 

There IS another alternative and here it is: 

Go to your trusty Hoyt dealer and ask him for a Handle Dowel Conversion kit. Or even email him the link to this page to show him exactly what you want. 

And here's what is inside. The Hardlock limb dowels, end screws and some shim rings for alignment issues.

For illustrative purposes, this is the bit that you've got to take out. Remember to keep it safe if you want to go back to the original Axis limb system.

At this point, you need to take a deep breath and visit a machinist who you trust, or who happens to work on archery equipment, or who is also an archer. Brendan Wallace, of Archery Weight Systems just happens to be all three. 

NOTE: Brendan tried using his collet chuck, but his 1/4 inch bit was undersize and wouldn't seat properly.  I said I was okay if he used a Jacobs chuck for the work. 

The chuck IS actually spinning at this point, but the flash freezes everything. 

Note that the riser is held underneath by the handy parallel surfaces under the limb pockets. A piece of medium density fiberboard,  with the corners cut off to clear the radius holds the riser in the vice extremely rigidly and doesn't mark the surface anodisation.

A few passes on each side removes 2 mm, making the slot wider by 4mm total This gives clearance for the dovetail bolt of the standard ILF limb and leaves room for limb alignment side adjustment..

Here's an end shot to show you how much room is left. Fresh off the mill, it hasn't been cleaned yet.

Here's a closeup of the dowel and the clearance either side.

The grub screw in the middle of the dowel cutout is the rotation locking system.  Unfortunately, the hole in the riser for the thumbscrew means that it won't be of any use to stop the dowel rotating as it will screw down into thin air and fall out the bottom. Take care aligning the dowel and tighten the side screw.

The countersink at the start of the grub screw hole serves as the locator for the sprung pin on the ILF fitting.

So now your Axis can take HDS (ILF) limbs!

Even better, if you decide that for some reason you want to go back to the original system, you can just put your old fittings back in!

A big thanks to Brendan Wallace for the machining  and Jake Kaminski for the inspiration!

Recently John Magera in the USA decided to convert his Axis, but no machinist would take on the job.

The original thread can be found here

Okay, by now everyone knows how much I like my "old" Axis risers. I've tried a bunch, and so far, no other riser has shot as well for me as those old warhorses. Now that I have three of them to play with, I decided I'd try to convert at least one to accept ILF dovetails. Thanks to the good folks down under (on the Aussie forum) for their instructions, and ultimately Jake Kaminski for his courage to manhandle his own Axis riser, I took the plunge.

The original "instructions" I followed were here:

http://glide.net.au/Axisconversion/

However, I couldn't find a machinist that was willing to touch my handles. They were all afraid they would screw something up and didn't want to get sued. I tried to reassure them, but to no avail. I guess I didn't try that hard, since I thought I could probably do this work myself fairly easily. And I was correct on that point. It's not that hard to do.

Using a vise on my workbench (padded of course), I secured each end of the riser so it wouldn't move and was at a comfortable working height. Then I just took the end of a standard hacksaw blade and made a short horizontal cut along the line of the factory slot (that was already in the end of the riser) and another vertical cut at the edge of the new slot. Each cut was only a few mm wide and was done pretty easily by hand.

I used a regular square file (mill bstd. file) to square up the new, wider slot.

At this point, I thought I was done, since my new wider slot in the end of the riser looked just like the pictures in the link above. However, once I inserted the conversion dowel and looked closely, I realized this wasn't going to work. The slot needed to be deeper than the original factory slot.

So I went down to the local hardware store (my second-favorite archery shop!) and bought a carbide-steel cutting bit for my dremel tool. I used that bit to deepen the overall channel enough that the depth matched the depth of the dovetail on the conversion dowel. Then to finish it off, I cut a shallow groove for the pin to follow when I insert the limb.

To dull the shiny aluminum, I just used a plain black sharpie.

I think it looks pretty good, and it works very well. Once the bow is assembled (and even when it's not) you can't tell it wasn't supposed to be like that.

Anyone wanting me to walk them through this, just PM me and I'll be glad to do it. I know one reason we don't seem more Axis risers these days is because of the limb attachment system, and because the original limb hardware is getting harder and harder to find. That was the reason I converted this one. I only have two sets of original limb bushings and I was getting tired of swapping them whenever I wanted to try out some new limbs. So now I don't have to...

Pictures are available here:

http://www.archerytalk.com/vb/showthread.php?t=996114

And here is a picture of one of my risers that I have not converted to show the original configuration. Note the factory "channel" leading to the dowel. If your Axis riser already has this (not all of them do I discovered), then it's pretty simple to just widen and deepen it enough to get the dovetail to the replacement dowel.

Had about an hour to tinker with bows this evening, so I figured I'd see if I could convert another Axis riser. This time I decided to convert one without the factory channel. This was a little more difficult, since I had to remove about 5 times as much material, but I figured out a way to make it go pretty smooth. I used a drill bit to drill three parallel holes in the end of the riser - that removed most of the material quickly. Then I cut into those holes with the hacksaw blade and finally I used the Dremel and a square file to remove the rest of the material and shape the channel.

Worked fine. Having the experience from the first riser helped. The pictures below show one limb pocket before the conversion and the other after.

Total time on this bow - about 45 minutes. Tools were a cordless drill and 1/4" bit, Dremel tool with carbide cutting bit, plain square end metal file (5/8" wide) and the very end of a normal hacksaw blade.

Safety glasses and some patience and planning are a must.

John.