HOI lam help

[Aries]

Ok guys, here is what I have. 62” long hickory backed ipe, I’m planning on making it a med r/d.   

My hickory backing strip is about 7/32” thick.

My Ipe belly pieces are 3/8 their whole length.

The awkward handle piece is…  17” long overall. The flat spot for the handle/shooting window is 5” long. And the thickest section of the handle is 2.25” right now, it tapers to a knife edge at the ends.

I have everything cut to 1.5” in wide at this stage, and am wanting to end up with a 60-65# bow.

My main questions are:

Have I screwed up yet?

Is my backing strip an OK thickness or should I go thinner?

How thin should my belly lam be to clamp down to the shape of my handle, and should I pretaper it at both the handle and the tips?   
And how thick should my IPE belly be too get me on the right track to coming out at 60-65#

I got all gung ho about trying a single piece of wood for my handle section and now I am kind of stuck.   I have made about 10 lams so far. 5 have survived to shoot and 3 of which are still in commission. Most are R/D that I glued up myself (which explains all the failures).  So I’m Hoping to turn my luck around with this bow.   
I blame most of my past failures on bad glue up jobs and inexperience, but I think I have my problems fixed up now and I have learned plenty of ways to break a bow that I can now avoid       Ty

[bubby]

what kind of draw length are ya going for, I usually go 4" handle, and 1 1/2" or 2" fades, just like the smaller grips,gives ya more bend on a short bow, Bub

[Aries]

probably around the traditional 28"

[Aries]

Do I need to add some more info to get some input on my belly lam thickness?

[bubby]

do a dry run clamping it down, if it won't go down tight, I imagine you'll have to thin it, good luck

[Cameroo]

I've never made one either, but I agree with Scott.  The slope from the fade up into the handle looks pretty drastic.  I suspect that you could probably make the handle not quite so deep too.  I would think that 1.75" would be plenty thick, and then you could have a more gradual curve up the slope and still have a 5" long handle.  Again, I have no experience with this, but that's where I would start.

Out of curiosity, where have your other glue-ups been failing?  Have you used that same handle design before with success?

[Jesse]

That ipe will never make that bend. I would cut the ends of the ipe at 45 deg. both sides to make a joint or you could do a w splice or something but thats not necessary. Glue the ipe and hickory up first but put an 18" long power lam between the hickory and ipe  . After glue up shape your riser to match the curve. That will most likely make it shorter but add a couple thin lams under it starting at about 17" long. The way you have it now is more suited for a multiple lam bow like used in a fiberglass bow.  Here is one I built with similar dimensions as I described

[Aries]

Thanks for the advice guys. And cameroo my other bows have had traditional handles such as the one Jesse posted.   For the most part they were breaking from bad gluenlines caused from using clamps with too small of heads that applied uneven pressure.

I believe I will modify my handle to make it a more gentle curve and I will taper down the last 6  or so inches of the handle side of the ipe to a knife edge, as well as thin the whole piece to around 5/16". This will give me just over .5 Inches of overall thickness at the end of my handle.

 I am pretty much happy with a shooting bow, making weight is just a plus when I'm experimenting