This is a redo of a bow that I recently built. Shortly after posting that bow on this forum the backing failed due to a delamination. I had built this bow for a gentleman on the east side of the mountains and rather than make him wait while I started from scratch I decided to attempt to salvage what I had. First I removed the failed backing from the core using a rasp and a mirco-plane. I decided to try a different species of bamboo so I found a Tonkin bamboo pole, split it and worked it down to a strip suitable for backing. Tonkin is much smaller in diameter than the moso that I normally use, but given the narrow limbs of the bow, it worked fine. I glued the new backing strip onto the old core and put the bow onto a form to give it a mild r/d profile. After curing, I cleaned it up, put on new tips and retillered the bow. I scraped the nodes a bit and noticed that the Tonkin power-fibers end abruptly at the node rather than wrap around like Moso. That made me nervous so I reinforced the nodes on the upper limb with thin rawhide and wrapped them with thread. It’s probably overkill, but after all the troubles I’ve had with bamboo lately, I didn’t want to take any chances. Here are the specs:
40# @ 28”, 67” ntn, 1” wide limbs tapering to 7/16” at the tips, limbs are asymetrical. The backing is Tonkin bamboo, tip overlays are cocobolo, the core is Ipe, and the handle accent and powerlam are osage. The bamboo is stained using black leather dye and the finish is Tru-Oil. The handle and lacing are chocolate brown leather. Bow mass is 17.5 ounces.
