New guy with questions on self bow handle width vs thickness.

[twisted hickory]

Hello pa, I am new to here and have a question. I am building a hickory self bow 68 tt 2 in wide to midlimbs tapering to .5 tips handle 1.50 inches thick by .75 inches wide. I am shooting for 50 lbs at 27 inches. How narrow can you make the handle if you make the handle about 1.50 thick? I don't want a bending handle. I have seen some picts on google and some of the handles look to be as narrow as 5/8 of an inch or I am guessing the width wrong.
I have built 4 bows so far three of them are cut at or near center shot but I want to make the entire handle narrow enough to make it a little easier to tune with arrows.
BTW thanks to all who freely share information on this site, it helped me build my first self bow
Thanks
Greg

[Pat B]

Wood is 8 times stronger in thickness thanis in width so theoretically you will have plenty of strength at 3/4" wide less but the stability of the bow will be challenged. With a bow 68" long you get a lot of leverage from the limbs at the handle and if not tillered just right you may get latteral bend in the handle area.
  There is no need for a center or near center shot bow if your arrows are spined correctly for the bow and your style of shooting. If you want a center shot bow, get a FG bow. If you want to make a good shooting wood bow spend some time on construction arrows that are appropriate for the bow.

[RyanY]

After a bad experience, I wouldn't build a board bow with a handle less than 1" wide unless it was quite a light bow or the board was thick enough that it didn't need a built up handle. On a selfbow 3/4" wide should be fine with that depth of handle. Just make sure your string tracking is good. If its really bad that could cause the handle to flex laterally and break.

[twisted hickory]

Thanks for the help. I will go width of .75 x 1.50 and see what happens. One of my self bows has riser cut to. Center. At that section it's 1.75 thick x .75 and so far it's fine at 51 @ 27 inches.