0209,
I can't answer from experience, but I recently got a copy of Adam Karpowicz' book, "Ottoman Turkish bows", which I highly recommend, by the way, and he suggests sugar maple for the core. The book also lays out in great detail all of the steps involved, lots of clear pictures and photographs. If you can hold off for a couple of weeks or so, while gathering supplies, and get a copy, it'd be money well spent.
'Besides, you were just saying how you needed another book for you bowyers library, anyway, right?
Frode