Different species of billets

[cutty]

Has anyone ever tried different type of wood species for billets? Just wondering if this could help with the bottom limb taking more stress.

[Limbit]

I've always wondered the same, but have never tried. It might be easier to use less dense and more dense billets from the same species. For instance, you could go to a lumberyard and select some ash billets that have different ring density quite easily. If not this, I'd imagine you'd need to match up similar woods that have similar properties to keep one limb from taking excessive set while the other doesn't or some other issue like that. Seems hard to wrap your head around, but sounds like an interesting project at least.

[Del the cat]

Just my opinion of course, and I apologise if it sound harsh.
To me it sounds like a classic problem creation exercise!
The solution is to tiller the bow properly, if you deliberately miss-match the limbs it's probably going to make tillering more difficult or at least more counter-intuitive.
If there is a problem with tillering... there will still be a problem with tillering.

To be fair, we all have some tiller shift occasionally and that's why why shoot bows in.
I just had a flight bow I'm making shift on me and the lower limb suddenly appeared way too strong, because I'd made it slightly too strong and it started overpowering the upper limb. Fortunately I'd allowed a couple of pounds over weight and a few scraped brought it back in line.

Mind if you want to make a bow with two different species for the limbs as a novelty, or character bow, that's different. I just think it will make the job harder rather than easier
Del

[stuckinthemud]

Its not something i would set out to do, but, if i had two damaged bows each with one good limb then i would splice the good halves together to see what might happen

[Eric Krewson]

I have a lot of mismatched osage billets that I splice together occasionally. Tillering them to match is not as easy as using matched billets and I never completely trust the finished product. It always turns out that one billet will have softer or harder wood than the other one ever if the rings are a close match.

[Pat B]

I think Pappy did a yew/osage bow a few years ago. If I remember correctly it worked just fine.

[PEARL DRUMS]

I never consider how one billet may react compared to the other half as I progress. I build and tiller as if its one piece. Never noticed sister billets act any different than total mismatched billets, which is what most of my billet bows are......Mutts

[Badger]

   I have seen several bows from different species posted here over the years. I imagine the builders of those bows will come along shortly.

[bradsmith2010]

I have spliced the two limbs from different bows together,, the tiller didnt seem to be more difficult,,
it just looked funny,,but if you didnt look at it,, it shot just fine,