It's been done. Not sure of the performance level, but the main hurdle seems to be the pre-tillering of the boo pieces. You can't go scraping the rind and nodes away on the belly once it's glued up. You can grind/flatten the inside of the belly to get a nice bend before glue up, but it's naturally going to be stiffer near the nodes. Can't really use a tillering gizmo here, so you need to have a good eye for how it's bending beforehand, then there's the fact that the nodes on the back and the belly will likely fall in different areas, so that will affect tiller as well. A 15 year old kid did a couple recurves on another site. His first one was a learning experience. The second one came out better. He used a shorter and thicker (12"L X 1" Thick, tapered to the tips) power lam for a handle section. He also heat tempered the belly before pretillering to a caramel color. Here were his specs.
(Note that the belly was the thicker of the two. The back looked lilke it was prepped much like any other BB bow)
my 40# bow has a 1/2" thick, 18" long handle, is 60" ntn and measures:
- 7/16" at midlimb (1/2" at fades, 3/8" 4" away from the tips)
my 58# bow (feels a little lighter, guess 55#, wich might also be the smooth draw)
has a 12" long, 1" thick powerlam/grip, is58" ntn and measures:
- 15/32" at midlimb (9/16" at the fades, 11/32" at 4" from tip)
the gain of drawweight from 1/16" and 2" shorter is 15pounds... wow
