very nice bow with an excellent tiller, looks like fine work.
Can I ask, why you put the ipe , the densest of the woods in the core and not on the belly? I have made a few trilams and I always put ipe on the belly....was wondering if you knew something I dont?
how long is the bow?
Sorry, the bow is 70" ntn.
As you mentioned, ipe and osage are both excellent belly woods... the two best, IMHO. So, I decided to try ipe as a core wood. Never done it before. I've used osage as a core wood with ipe. I thought the maple, ipe, & osage would make a nice contrast in colors.
I think many bow makers are under the misconception that the core wood doesn't matter. Not true. The core wood should be dense, and strong. This will make the bow stronger, with less set. Each glue line (2 with a tri lam) creates a plane of opposing forces of tension and compression. A weak core material, like maybe pine, will create a weak link.
Core wood doesn't matter when it comes to FG bows. The core wood is only a cosmetic layer with clear FG, or simply a carrying material for the FG if it's dark. The FG does all the work.
The woods I've used as core material for tri lams are: osage, ipe, bloodwood, purpleheart, yellowheart, bamboo, jatoba, bocote, and wenge. These are all dense strong hardwoods (except the bamboo, which isn't wood anyway).