Board Bow Wood Selection-Performance

[BrokenArrow]

I have made about 20 laminated board bows and backed all but two with hickory (some quarterswan and flatsawn hickory).
Of all the bows the one that shoots the best was the last one I suspected would.
The bow seems very elastic and is not as harsh a shot as my jatoba (Brazilian cherry) and purpleheart core bows.
It is a 60 inch flatsawn hickory back, canary wood core and jatoba belly. (75% of the wood used was canary wood)
It is 52 pounds at 28 inches, 3/4 inch thick handle and just over 1 inch wide at handle.
It has a partial arrow shelf cut in and a small shelf added on.

What experiences with laminated wood combinations have others had which produced the best shooting bows?
More specifically what core woods and in what dimensions have worked best as this seems to be the key?

Sorry no pictures yet.

[skarhand]

I have done several lam bows using Ipe and Ash. The only Ipe bow I made without ash was hickory, and it broke, lol. Go figure.

I think that was my fault though the hickory piece was a bit iffy, but I had heard so much about how forgiving hickory was that I chanced it. Won't do that again, lol. I was more sad about the teak I wasted on the handle.

[brettd]

I am beginning to wonder how important wood choice is on board bows.  I accidentally backed a red oak belly with maple (I was in a hurry and didn't notice it wasn't a hickory board) and it seemed to work the same as the hickory backed red oak bows I make....

Of course, I have made exactly 5 bows (but 4 of them turned out great!) which makes me a total beginner....

[Pat B]

Designing the bow to suit the wood(s) used is more important. There are lots of wood combos that will make great bows with good performance.  I don't think having a multi-lam bow makes it any better than a backed or self bow. It might be easier to manipulate the style to improve performance with a multi-lam bow but they are more work to build.
  I have built hickory backed osage, ipe, lemonwood, locust, yew and mulberry, all with good results. I have backed a few bows with boo but for me boo is too unreliable.
 Marc St Louis builds some very fast self and backed bows with "ordinary" woods because he designs the bow to be high performance and he executed the build to handle the stresses involved.

[GB]

Pretty new to this also, working on my 15th bow now and have only made a handful of laminated board bows.  Mine all have stiff handles, 66" long for the R/D profile, 63" for the two recurves I've made.  I used osage for the belly on all of them, elm for the cores on the recurves and cherry on one R/D longbow and walnut on the other.  I haven't made enough of them to have a real opinion as far as the performance of the core wood goes.  I guess I'm more focused on trying to get the design and tillering right, where I am right now.  I like 'em all and they all shoot as well as my questionable form allows.
My favorite shooting bow was a 66" hickory backed elm board.  It was pretty fast, I always shot well with it, and it took very little set.  So of course it's started to fret on the upper limb.  I'm working on a replacement.

[Badger]

      As far as cores go I just ry and find something relatively light like maple or ash. I have made quite a few jatoba bows and they are great shooters but prone to fretting. Every single jatoba belly I have used has eventually fretted except elbs or straight bows maybe.

[mikekeswick]

Yes just use light cores - they really aren't that important. I've tried just about every combo I can think of and maple/ash/pau amerrillo are my favourites. Not too high s.g. and great gluing properties are what you want.
Much, much more important is the correct tiller for the front view profile and keeping the belly wood 'fresh' by careful tillering.

[Prarie Bowyer]

Bamboo backed Ipe... holy smokes.

[Pat B]

Boo backed ipe makes a great, fast shooting bow until the boo lifts a splinter or blows. Hickory backed ipe would only be a few FPS slower and I have never had a hickory backed bow blow due to back failure.