Making Laminated bows.

[Robinwho]

I have quite a few exotic woods pieces about 48" inches long and 8 to 10 Wide By 1 inch thick
Am planing to sliced to make laminated bows, what thickness should I cut them to ? 1/16 or what ?
I never done laminated bows before, but these are beautifully bocote,rose wood ,sapele, zebra wood, I figure they will make beautiful bows and risers.

[Jbell]

Are you talking about bamboo or Hickory backed bows? For a Bamboo reflex deflex bow that I typically make, The belly slat is about a 7/16 or 1/2" with a 1/8 or 3/16 taper from handle to tip, that will get me a 60-65 pounder. But their are many factors involved, meaning amount of reflex,deflex, recurve, length, draw weight and so on and soforth. I guess It is kind of hard to answer your question without knowing what exactly you are after. For someone who has never made a backed bow I would suggest watching Dean Torges' video about bamboo backed bows, this will get you started. Also probably not a good idea to make a tri-lam bow on your first try. Hope this helps some.

[Robinwho]

Not Backing a bow , but making a bow with laminations of different woods.

I have made hundreds if not a thousand bows and have backed them with everything under the sun.
But making bows with 3 or 4 laminations I have not.

I found this site with some instruction but it lacks a lot;

http://www.lothac.com/Stry_buildabow.html

[Jbell]

I got ya. So you are talkin about a laminated glass bow? Can't help ya there, never messed with the itchy stuff, only on old Corvettes.
  Normally this board is for natural materials only, but i will let someone else chime in on that.

[GraemeK]

Hi Robin?
The article you mentioned talks about building a laminated bow with fiber glass back and belly but the glass is not necessary if you want to build an all wood bow. I often build tri lam all wood bows and with the appropriate choice of timber they very effective allowing a light core with high tension material on the back and high compression material on the belly. Obviously one of the main advantages of this type of bow is that you can glue as much reflex in as you want.

Graeme

[Robinwho]

Hi Robin?
The article you mentioned talks about building a laminated bow with fiber glass back and belly but the glass is not necessary if you want to build an all wood bow. I often build tri lam all wood bows and with the appropriate choice of timber they very effective allowing a light core with high tension material on the back and high compression material on the belly. Obviously one of the main advantages of this type of bow is that you can glue as much reflex in as you want.

Graeme

Exactly what I mean, I don't want to use glass, I have in the past used glass to back some yew bows that had one too many knots and they seem to hold.
I want to build a bow , maybe with sapele as the core, then the belly would be rosewood and Paduk back with a zebra wood riser.
Am just wondering on cutting the both the belly and the back thickness to get to say a #50 or #60 Bow ?

[GraemeK]

Not possible to give you much help with lam thicknesses as it will depend on length width ect . But as a guide the last 50# trilam I made was 68" long and one and a quarter wide at the handle tapered to half at the tips and the limbs were a little less than half an inch thick at the fades and a quarter near the tips. The best advice I can give you is take your best guess and start wit plenty of length and width plus make the belly lam as thick as possible then adjust the length and tiller the belly to get near your weight.

Graeme

[Justin Snyder]

How many laminations are you looking to use? Using three 1/16" laminations at 1 1/2" wide with a heavy wood will give you 50# @28. I have no experience with those woods, so I cant tell you.  You are still going to need a good quality piece for the back, just like you were making a backed bow. I would go with a hickory backing on 3 laminations myself, then see what happens.  Justin

[Robinwho]

I had in mind using the sapele as a core wood is tight grain and hard as hickory, then rose wood for the front and maybe bocote for the back, I'll try and photograph the whole thing and then post the results whether good or bad, LOL