So, I'm about 6 bows down the line and I've made the following.
1. Sheetrock Tape backed Red Oak board bow.
2. 60# Hickory longbow
3. 50# Paper backed hickory longbow (stained red)
4. Hickory longbow, flipped tips, left handed
5. Steam bent R/D hickory short bow (bend through handle)
6. Recurve hickory selfbow, painted to look like a videogame bow.
I have 2 more hickory boards left, about 61 inches long each, and I'm not sure what to do with them... I have no way to make a large-scale form, unfortunately, otherwise I would try out a more fluid R/D design.
What would you do?
if you could splice 32.5 off each board you could get a 65" bow that would be able to accept a riser block, allowing you to cut an arrow rest and give you some freedom styling the grip to your liking. the boards would have to have similar grain though. for gluing in r/d i dont think you really need a large form, you can just use some blocks at the ends of your limbs and at the handle. if you look at rudderbows site they have pics of their r/d glueups.
or you could cut off 36" and make a 72" longbow, which would be more forgiving of form errors and be a bit quieter. either way you could have scrap to use to glue reflex into the tips if you wanted, or with the 65" i think youd have 28.5" scraps you could make some hickory arrows from.