half eye, ozzy, toomanyknots, soy, erictheviking, ifrit, johnston, turtlecreek... thanks for the very kind words!!
tattoo dave, the hickory and maple worked really well together, better than I expected.
bubby, this is the first maple that hasn't chrysalled on me, but the other ones might have been soft maple. I have a love/hate relationship with maple. I love its light weight, diffuse porous rings, but I hate working it. I use surforms and rasps, and maple seems to want to leave low spots when working the whole limb. I have to be extremely diligent to avoid hinges.
higheagle, here are the things I would do differently for next time:
1 - When I cut the hickory backing strip it was 3/16" wide. At the time I thought it was pretty darn thin, then I did a little research and got scared that the hickory was too thick. This was AFTER I had already glued it to the maple! So I sanded it down to 1/8" thick and "crowned" it (trapped the back, but with a rounded profile, like a natural stave). It would have been a LOT less work to cut the backing strip the correct thickness from the beginning.
2 - You can see most of the reflex is near the handle. The unbraced bow looks like a shallow V when I think the reflex should be spread through the whole limb, so the unbraced profile would look like a shallow U. I should have tillered the maple BEFORE gluing up.
A little more about the handle, it is suede fabric stitched with black cotton string. The back and belly sides of the handle are padded with a cut up old sock and the suede handle wrapped over top, glued together (but not to the bow), and wrapped with waxed leather cord.
