Sort of inspired by the south indian composite bows that are boo on wood core with horn belly recurves. This bow has boo back, fully tapered and tillere osage core, and thin ipe lam on belly. Its 62" ntn, 58#/27". Its 1" (2.54 cm) wide at the fades. It has brown osage tip overlays and handle built up from 1/8" ipe strips. The osage core is a bias grained slat of some very light density stuff with thick early growth. The ipe strip was supurb piece, flat sawn with a continuous ring across most of its length. 2 runouts. Finished bow weighs only 14.5 ounces (413 g).
I pretillered the osage slat, steamed in some of the curve at the ends, backed with the boo. Tillered the bow out to about 40#, about 9/19" thick in grip area. To get the glueing surface on the belly, I sanded it with a sanding block perfectly flat. Here I discovered my first glitch. One tip was miss-aligned a bit throwing the string off center. I glued the 1/18" ipe strip on with TB3, and set up a form to pull the tip over. I wish I had taken the backed core down to around 30# and sanded the ipe strip down to 1/16, because I had to remove so much ipe and essentially re-tiller from scratch. Ipe ended up very thin. Started last Oct. and have been fiddling with it all fall and winter. Awesome to shoot.
Dave
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