Osage belly lam

[Blaflair2]

How thick should I make an osage belly lam? I don't have a lot of osage in boards so I wanna make sure I don't waste too much.

Also thinking of using BL as a backing

[---GUTSHOT--->]

I've made 4 tri lam bows with 1/8 thick Osage for the belly lam. 1/8" ipe core 1/8" hickory backing. They all turned out to be good smooth bows ranging from 35# to 60#

[---GUTSHOT--->]

Here is one of them I made to turkey hunt with

[Blaflair2]

Well I guess my question is how thick should I make the osage belly for say a 60# bow, and build up a handle

Cool bow

[Blaflair2]

The BL had a small knot, so I'm gonna use something else

[bubby]

If you mean a simple backed bow not a tri lam i cut mine 1/2" thick with a backer that will give you 5/8" thick, you could probably go 3/8" but it's easier to take wood off than put it back

[blackhawk]

Agree with bub...if your making a simple two piece lam bow then rip the board on a saw at a fat half inch thick...then taper it from the fades to the tips to 3/8"...I taper all my lams no matter how many I throw in it. It makes things soooooooo much easier in so many ways. So make your backing strip 1/8" thick in the middle n taper it to a 1/16".

[Springbuck]

Blackhawk has it right.  3/*" thick is enough, really, with a 1/8" backing, BUT that is then a consistently thick "stave", and it will take very little adjustment to screw it up as you tiller.

When I made more R/D lam bows, I would use a power lam down by the handle, a core tapered from about 3/8" to 5/16", and a wedge at the tips maybe 1/8" thick on the butt end, with a 1/8" backing, and barely had to touch up the middle 50% of the limb.  BUT, that set up came to be after  much trial and error, including 6-8 way too thick glue ups, or various other failures for various reasons.