Hickory Backed Osage Build (Help needed)

Started by Mad Max, August 19, 2015, 04:05:00 PM

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Mad Max

I have a hickory slat and osage board from 3Rivers

I can taper the Hickory and the osage
I would like to build a wider bow than I usually build maybe 1 3/4" at the fades 1/2" at tips
12" riser glued to belly like this one
 

68"NTN some reflex and flipped tips
45/50#
with the osage and hickory tapered I can heat treat the osage before glueup and tiller from the sides after glueup? yes?

What thickness and Taper should I use for both????????????
I would rather fail at something above my means, than to succeed at something  beneath my means  
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PEARL DRUMS

That's too wide Mark. You wont have any osage left by the time you tiller it to the weight you want, and length. 1 1/2" max at that length, 1 1/8-1/4 would be better. No need to heat treat, and no need to pre-bend the core. Its thin enough you should be able to flex the reflex in with a clamp. Tiller the belly after glue up. Just like a self bow. The back is parallel. I suppose you could grind a 1/16" taper in the osage if you want to. Or, scrap/rasp it off as you floor tiller.

LittleBen

On my lam bows I typically only side tiller, but I spent a lot of time fine tuning the taper to allow that.

I like to build me a bit wide, but I also tend to glue in lots of reflex. I still would only go 1.5" max on the glue up and probably end around 1.375" wide.

Pearlie has probably built 10x more of these than I have though so I'd heed his advice.

I would probably leave the hickory parallel instead of tapering. It's slightly less dense than osage, so it should actually yield slightly lighter mass tips that way all else equal.

PEARL DRUMS

Your a glue bow master Benny. I just have preferences after a few.

Mad Max

The Osage is about 5/8 now
How thick should I start
1 3/8" sounds good for width
I would rather fail at something above my means, than to succeed at something  beneath my means  
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takefive

I like to rip the Osage board so I can get two bows out of it.  I wind up with two 1/4" belly lams.  I make the hickory backer 3/16" tapering to 1/8" at the tips.  A 3/16" power lam (I like red elm, but maple, walnut, etc. is fine) 36" long gives me ample thickness for a 45 to 50# bow.  You can make the power lam much shorter, but it's easier for me to get good glue lines with a longer one.  Last 45# bow I made was 1 1/2" wide at the fades and just a hair over 1/2" thick at the end of the fades.  Nice thing about hickory is that you can always take wood off the backer in a pinch if it's good, straight grain.
It's hard to make a wooden bow which isn't beautiful, even if it's ugly.
-Tim Baker

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