I've started on my next bow. It will be a 66" Hill style tri-lam. It has a bamboo backing, a cypress center lam, and ipe belly. This cypress was cut locally and used by my Grandfather to build his house back in the 1930s. It had been stored in the loft of his barn for 50 years until his death in 1989. I have only a few good pieces. I plan to have some cut into lams for a fiberglass bow that I plan to build one day soon. Anyway, I pre-tapered the core and ipe leaving a thick 14" center section flat on each piece. This thick portion will serve as my island of wood to glue my handle to. I have had trouble with some of them bending into the handle and making the glue lines bulge. I used my new form for this one. I took out the middle post, and used the two deflex posts to support my rather flat handle section. I glued in 2 1/2" of reflex. I'm hoping it will have 1/2-1" when I am finished. Here is the glue up. If you will notice, I had to add two pieces of square tubing so that I had something for my clamps to grab. They would fit around the whole form.
Out of the form it still retained 2" of reflex. This is one stout puppy! I'm gonna have bunches of ipe to remove. Good thing I made the cypress thin. Here she is out of the form. I used plenty of Tite-Bond 3 for the glue up.
Luckily things didn't shift much in the form. I wrap electrical tape around the laminates very tightly in three places before I draw it to the forms profile with clamps. You will have minimal shifting though. You will lose a little width while cleaning up the core. I started with a width of 1 1/4" and am hoping for a finished bow with 1 1/8" wide mid-limbs. She cleaned up nice. The glue lines are superb! They keep getting better.
I forgot to mention. While the blank was curing in the form for 24 hours, I prepared my riser and tip overlays. I was using a solid ipe block for my riser, but wanted a hickory accent stripe. Here is the ipe and hickory glued up. In the past I have stacked several pieces of handle material, but with this one in wasn't required since my handle section is flat. I glued some pre-prepared elk antler to a thin piece of ipe, for contrast, with CA Gel.
