If you were going to make a straight limb hill style bow 68" n2n that pulled 40#@29" and could only use one lam for the core, what would your wood choice be? I have maple, black walnut, hickory, cherry, and ash to choose from. I am not building this bow, but am having it made for me.

Any input would be awesome.

Thanks.

Jon

If only one lam I would probably use hickory, just because of the toughness of it.All of your choices make a good bow.

Jon, I'd go with hickory.  My first truly successful bow was a HBH and is still a shooter. Took a little set but that was my fault.

OK sounds good. Just to clarify, this will be a glass bow, not a selfbow.

Jon

I`d choose the lam with best edge grain....

Any reason we are limited to just one core lamination?

I just did a r/d with maple core and black glass. Great little shooter

QuoteOriginally posted by rmorris:
Any reason we are limited to just one core lamination?

I might possibly be able to have them build it with two, but it will be a low cost longbow, so a ton of laminations isn't an option. I am thinking maybe two lams of maple with a maple riser and brown glass. What do you think?

Jon

I can't remember the stack of the 40# 68"hill bow I made last but I will head over to my shop sometime Thursday after work and take a look. For some reason I am thinking the total stack was around .385 with a .004/in total taper. With 2 - .05 glass your core wood needs to be over 1/4" thick! I try not to make any of my laminations thicker than .100 and so I would go no less than 3 lamination of wood. Ask your bow maker what the price difference in 1 and 3 lams is, you end product will be a better bow. Heck , possibly you could barter with him and cut his grass while he is cutting the extra lams... Also all the woods are good  wood but maple will never disappoint

I'm kinda curious what the advantage of having more thin lamination's is? I build self bows, and they all shoot sweet and smooth, so why does having a single lamb of wood between glass act any different? Probably a stupid question, just curious. Thanks.

Jon

Jon, Here is some great reading on the subject.

http://tradgang.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=125;t=005333