Have any of you guys used oak lams in a glass bow?? How is the performance?? Will it stand up to the stresses?? I am thinking the grain is too open which could lead to inconsistency or failure... But if the grain was on edge it might work... I got a chit-load of rough-sawn oak boards... I put them on craigslist but now I am thinking that there might be a use for them...
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Dont build glass bows, but I'm sure others that do so will chime in. I have used white oak for a center lam in wood bows between maple and it does increase performance in my opinion.
Never tried oak, but I have used ash which has a very similar grain structure. Worked just fine. I think you'll be ok. I'd give it a try myself if I had that much oak laying around.
Hey Shredd. Did you ever get any lams made from the oak and if so have you glued up any of them?
I used a big bunch of oak I had in a handle on a prototype bow actually polished up pretty good looking.
I dunno about lams, but the board bow folks swear by oak...
The reason folks use red oak for wood bows is because it is cheap and readily available. Generally as soon as they can they switch to a better bow wood. Not saying that good bows can't be made with red oak, I've done it but there are better options.
Red oak might make OK lams for a glass bow but like with all wood bows, there are better options.
Maybe you could trade the red oak for hard maple on Craigslist. Hard maple is a proven lam bow wood.
Maple boards at a local hardware store are stupid cheap here in okc. Like 1x2x 8 foot long cost only 10$ even with my sloppy table saw work I can get a lot of lams from that.
Yeah... but Shedd and I live in SW Florida where there are no lumberyards, per se, and locals have trouble spelling m.a.p.l.e :banghead:
Update on the Oak... I sold half of it about a week ago and made $250... I will keep a couple of the nicer pieces for projects... I doubt I will be using for bows, but you never know... ;) :)