East Indian rosewood

[TimothyR]

Anyone know design and dimensions for East Indian Rosewood?  It will be bamboo backed. Thanks for any help

[bowmo]

Never heard of anyone using it before.

[DavidV]

I'd use it just like ipe which here's a bunch of dimensions for if you look. On paper rosewoods look pretty flexible.

[Knotty]

I agree with David, honestly I'd use any unknown wood (to me) as Ipê , backing it with bamboo is the best way to go .

PS: Standard design: Pyramid Bow.

[TimothyR]

Thanks. That's what I was thinking too pyramid style 1 1/2" at fades. Going to make it long for safety

[Hamish]

Some of the English bowyers use it  as a belly wood on laminated elb, so it seems to hold up well at relatively small dimensions 1" wide.
1&1/2" wide  seems like a pretty good starting point. Adjust if necessary on subsequent bows.

[Marc St Louis]

Brazilian Rosewood is strong and elastic and makes a good bow but I heard many years ago that other species of Rosewood were not as elastic

[TimothyR]

Marc should I go wider?

[mullet]

If you don't know the characteristic of the wood I would go with thinner bamboo and thicker Rosewood. I've seen a lot of Ipe chrysal with bamboo.

[Hamish]

The type of rosewood I have heard used were Dalbergia latifolia- east indian, and sonokeling rosewood from Indonesia, on narrow elb's. I'm sure Brazilian rosewood would have been used in the past, and is probably performs even better if you can get hold of some post CITES import ban. Rosewood is a fairly generic description including many timbers that aren't dalbergia, like bubinga, PNG rosewood, Australian rosewood.