Putting a Belly on a bow?

[Deerhunter21]

I went through Leonwoods site and he put a bamboo belly on a 20-30 pound bow, and it made it go up to 70 pounds! so what I'm thinking is maybe you could take a terrible compression bow but amazing tension and put a belly on it like Ipe or bamboo and make it a great tension and compression bow! I know you can do this with laminents but could you do it with a stave?

[Del the cat]

Yes if you can get a reasonably flat surface to glue it on to. It can undulate up and down a bit, but needs to be flat across the width of the bow with no twist. E.G if you put a straight edge across the belly once it's flattened and slide it along the bow it shouldn't twist. If your belly slat is fairly thin, it will accommodate some up and down curves.
Pretty much like backing any bow.
Del

[DC]

I've done it a few times. The only problem I had other than what Del mentioned is guesstimating how much thickness of the old bow to leave on so that you don't tiller though your new lam. If you have a 30# bow that you want to be 40# it only takes about a 1/16th of an inch of wood so you should tiller the bow down to 20# or something so your belly lam will be thick enough.

[PatM]

If you are struggling with the process of fitting lams to the belly just grind the whole bow away except for the back strip.

 Your idea of matching tensile strength with compressive strength is what everyone does when they make a simple laminated bow.

[leonwood]

The only problem I had other than what Del mentioned is guesstimating how much thickness of the old bow to leave on so that you don't tiller though your new lam. If you have a 30# bow that you want to be 40# it only takes about a 1/16th of an inch of wood so you should tiller the bow down to 20# or something so your belly lam will be thick enough.

This is the biggest problem when doing it... The bamboo thing I did was just for fun to see what would happen. I did it again with another bow which needed to be around 45 pounds. I ended up scraping away 70% of the old belly and added new ipe belly lams to both limbs. Looks nice to with the new lams riding up the fades.

[Pat B]

I've done this on a couple of bows. I ground the old belly down flat and about 1/8" thick them added a 1/8" lam(I used Argentine osage on one and ipe on the other), reshaped the limb and retillered. I think I used Urac on one and Weldwood Plastic Resin on the other. I wouldn't hesitate to use TBIII for it either.
 The boo backed lemonwood I made earlier fretted in the lemonwood so I will do the same on it when I get around to it.