Anyone ever use Ipe as a lamination.
Yep. I just don't like it as a belly lam. There was a thread awhile ago on "the good, the bad, and the ugly" of using ipe. :)
My only problem that I've had with Ipe so far was with the one I was working on for my trade bow and actually it wasn't the Ipe's fault, it was my fault. I didn't give the Ipe enough credit for how strong it was and ignored a hingy spot in the bottom fade longer than I should have. If I would have paid closer attention to it then it wouldn't have cracked my boo backing in that spot.
All may not be lost though? I'm working on a repair very similar to Curt's BBI repair along by using osage as belly lams and a 10" strip of osage over the boo in the handle section to cover the crack in the boo. We'll see how it goes.
I'm making some Ipe/Boo bow blanks now and they are turning out very nice and the profile should be a simple tiller job. You just have to know how strong this stuff is and respect that.
Although you can get a bad batch of wood, that's always a possibility and most of the failures I've seen posted here on the bench was from bad wood and not necessarily bad workmanship.