Ipe with hand tools!

[HoorayHorace]

My ipe is all squared up and that, is is just cutting out the template of the rough bow that is taking time. Frustrating as I have limited patience by virtue 

Picture of the rough materials before I started, you can see how deep the thing is

[PatM]

I have cut away the excess belly material on pieces like that with either a circular saw, a handsaw and a hatchet. Really not that difficult although the handsaw is a bit time consuming.

[bubby]

Ya know buddys are a great resource, maybe a friend or a friend of a friend has a tablesaw to rip the thickness down

[HoorayHorace]

I'm using the hand saw 

At the middle, I am going for 1 1/4 wide, and 1 inch depth. 74 NTN.

Should that make a bow of around 90lbs @ 30?

 

[mikekeswick]

Cut down on the width.
1 1/8th is plenty width. You could even make this bow with only 1 inch width at the handle.
I've made 3 or 4 elb's over 100# with ipe at 1 inch wide handles. Granted they were almost  as thick as wide at the center.
I'm sure I gave you dimensions earlier.

[HoorayHorace]

Still sawing away!

[Strongbow]

I picked up a farriers rasp at a local farm supply for about $15.  It has become my favorite go to tool for roughing and shaping bows.  The one I have has a rough side that really hogs off wood, and a "fine" side that hogs off a little less.  I used it on my hickory backed ipe ELB, and it worked the wood really well.  I used the rasp almost exclusively on the belly, and only switched to a scraper for the final tooling.  As others have mentioned wear gloves, and a dust mask.

[cdpbrewer]

On roughing out IPE bows:
There are many different species of woods which are tagged "IPE".   Both IPE boards I've used would tear out in a heartbeat when a draw knife or spokeshave was used.   Worse yet direction of the cutting didn't seem to matter much.   If you lack a bandsaw,  a fast and relatively cheap way to rough out such wood is to carefully wielded 4.5" angle grinder fitted with a 36 grit flap.   It eats through wood very quickly.  I do it outdoors, wear a decent dust respirator and blow myself down with a leaf blower, throw the clothes in the washer then shower afterwards.   Tillering is then with alternate use of rasps and scrapers.     A tip for marking the dark oily stuff:  smooth the surface with a scraper, scribe the line, rub with chalk and  then wipe off chalk across the scribed line. 

c.d.

[bubby]

I don't know, i guess ipe don't bother me i work it like any other bowwood, bandsaw and farriors rasp, the less aggressive side, seems to reduce just like any other wood

[Springbuck]

I don't know, i guess ipe don't bother me i work it like any other bowwood, bandsaw and farriors rasp, the less aggressive side, seems to reduce just like any other wood

I've had some that would simply make my new 45.00 rasp that ate other woods for breakfast, skip and barely make a mark.

[steve b.]

Yea you can really tell how tough it is by how fast it dulls a cabinet scraper.