Psudo YEW? ~ Cherry and Hickory.

[Prarie Bowyer]

I was thinking of trying to make a psudo Yew long bow.  My thoughts were along the lines of a tri lam of bamboo, hickory sap wood and cherry for the belly.  Has anyone had experience in working with cherry?

[mikekeswick]

Yes - it's a bit brash. I would suggest using maple or ash for the backing as bamboo is almost certain to overpower the cherry without fairly severe trapping. Are you goingto stain it as the colour isn't similar to yew?

[Matt S.]

I have a nice Black Cherry board that should give me 4 - 6 belly lams. I plan on backing with Maple or White Ash. Everything I've read advised against using Hickory unless it is extremely thin and/or trapped. Bamboo would be even worse.
Prarie, sorry I don't have any experience with it yet, but thought you'd like to know that there are others thinking along the same lines

Now that I think about it, I believe Tim Baker had some Hickory/Pecan veneer backed Cherry bows in the "Turtle Bow" chapter of TBB4 (look through the chart in that chapter).

[Prarie Bowyer]

What is trapping?  What are the signs of an overpowered bow?

[TurtleCreek]

  I am by no means an expert, but trapping would be making the back of the bow narrower than the belly to give it a tarpezoid like cross-section.  The pros on here could prolly give you a more specific answer.

[TurtleCreek]

correction-  To give the limb a "trapezoid" like cross-section.

[Prarie Bowyer]

I'd think you want it the other way round.  to spread the force out on a wider belly.  I've done a bow like that actualy.  It was an accident but it worked out well

[mikekeswick]

Trapping is a way of getting either the back or the belly to work harder eg. be more strained. If there is less back then whats left has to work harder. Just as TC said it's basically making the cross section a trapezoid, so in this case the belly would be wider than the backing.

[Cameroo]

I've never worked cherry but have heard it is not very strong under compression.

To answer your other question - the sign of a belly being overpowered - if you look closely at the belly, you will see chrysals, which are just  small cracks that indicate the wood cells on the belly have been crushed and damaged.  By the time you see this, the damage is already done, and you will likely have a bunch of set that goes along with it.

Like I said, I've never worked with cherry, but trapping the back may be a way around this.  You will want to tiller slowly, and might want to try the "no set tillering technique" if you are concerned about damaging the belly.  There are threads about this technique on the forum.

[adb]

I wouldn't make a tri-lam using cherry as the belly wood. Especially a narrow and deep  type of profile. Cherry would not be able to handle the compressive forces, especially with bamboo.
I have used cherry as a mid-lam in a tri-lam bow, and it worked out fine.
Cherry is much better with a wide and flat type of profile. If you can keep cherry from chrysalling, it makes an excellent bow. I have made several maple backed cherry pyramid style bows, and had decent success.