What's the benefit of the top limb being longer?
The longer top limb brings the center of the bow closer to the arrow shelf which is supposed to help with bow balance in the hand. I believe this to be true, but only when shooting split finger release. When building a 3 under bow I use equal length limbs. In both regard you are designing the bow to be drawn close to the actual center of the bow to help keep the limb strain equal.
When you make these ones Taylor do you pre-taper the lams and have the tiller pretty close after glue up or do you treat as a a stave and tiller as per normal?
I pre-taper the laminations before glue-up using taper sleds and a thickness sander. Bows can also be built with parallel laminations and treated like a selfbow, but I have not tried that method yet.
How thick were your lams???
Lamination thickness will vary on the desired final weight of the bow. These were just under 1/4” each.
Cheers,
Taylor