Bamboo/maple/ipe trilam

[Hilongbow]

Just sharing another recent build, a bamboo/maple/ipe trilam I made for a friend in a trade. I got the better end of this deal with 4 handmade knives with handles made from a maple burl harvested from my parents' old house in NY and some cherry from my grandfather's workshop when he used to make furniture after retiring. Two of those knives were gifts to my parents for Christmas. The original deal was for a FG R/D bow, which broke, and I made this instead because working with FG drives me nuts. I wasn't happy with the final draw weight on the wood bow, so I (miraculously) managed to salvage the other bow and just about have that finished up to complete the trade.

The bow is a mild R/D design, with the maple core tapered about .003/inch. Handle is strips of koa, ipe, and maple. Tip overlays are koa. 30#@25" and 60" ntn, left handed. Sorry, I can't find an unbraced
















(before gluing on the handle)

It took a bit of set (couple inches I think) despite the low draw weight. I couldn't get it to stop bending at the fades until I brought the weight down super low. I made the power lam too thin and too short. The glue lines between the main lams and the power lam started separating in the fades 5 or 6 times during tillering, so there is a lot of super glue holding this one together. Not the best bow in the world but I think it turned out beautiful and would love to make another similar one someday with maybe another 2" overall length and a thicker, longer power lam to keep the inner limbs from bending too early.

Thank you for the opportunity to share.

Aloha

[ohma2]

That has a nice bend .

[Dante_F]

THAT HANDLE IS AWESOME... oh nice bow too

[Del the cat]

Sweet, lovely curve at FD
Del

[Woodely]

Nice bow and great job on the handle section.  Another lefty in the crowd I see.   

[PaSteve]

Nice bow. You did an excellent job on that handle.

[upstatenybowyer]

Very, very nice. 

[Dante_F]

woah, I was so distracted by the stripes i didn't see it was a lefty 

[Hilongbow]

Thanks for the nice comments. The handle came out way more beautiful than I had imagined in the beginning. It will probably set the standard for many of my future bows.

The friend I made it for is right handed, but left eye dominant, so he shoots all of his bows left handed. Seems to work well for him, and its fun to shoot his left handed bows once in a while and work the other side of my brain a little.

[Bayou Ben]

The bow is beautiful and the tiller looks great. 

From your comments it seems your glue up method is the only thing really holding you back.  You need to get that taken care of.  Wrapping a backing or even  3 lams with the bike innertube method is ok, but if you are adding power lams and d/r it isn't the best method in my experience.  You need a good amount of pressure to do this.  I've had seemingly small glue gaps lead to complete delams.  If you can incorporate some C-clamps in the power lam area that will help.
And of course I would check other possible glue up issues.  I don't believe moisture content of the wood was mentioned.
Once I found a way to evenly distribute clamping pressure and a good amount of it, my glue problems went away.
 
 

[Hilongbow]

I've done my two D/R trilams like this, using c clamps to get adequate pressure in critical areas (only tight enough to close the gap, but theoretically not tight enough to squeeze out all of the epoxy), and spring clamps and inner tubes for the gentler portions. But yes, you are right that it seems like something in my glue up process is causing me all of these failures. In my other recent post about my BBI delamination, it separated perfectly along the glue line. In the case of the FG bow mentioned in the original post of this thread, it delaminated perfectly along the glue line. In this bow, all of the separations in the riser/fade area were along the glue lines. None of the wood ever cracked or splintered in these bows. It looks like there is epoxy residue on both sides of the split.

This is kind of drifting from the original purpose of the thread, but does this system appropriate? Do you think that it is a surface prep issue or something? Since I am using epoxy, I use rough grit sand paper, and clean with compressed air or denatured alcohol, sometimes both. I cure for at least 24 hours at 90F-100F.

[Bayou Ben]

Sorry about that.  I'll respond to your other post.