Bowyers - reason for tapered lams.?

[Tom Anderson]

Can you explain to me why most bows incorporate tapered laminations?  
Looking at my personal bow, I notice that there's 3 laminations of wood, with the tapered lam. in the middle - thickest part at the tips.  Hmmm...why's it done that way?

[Apex Predator]

In order to get a bow bending in a uniform arc it has to taper.  You can accomplish that in limb width or thickness.  Narrow limb designs will require more thickness taper, and wider limbs not so much.  Without taper most of the bend will be concentrated right outside the fadeouts.  In most cases more working limb is better than less.  There are tradeoffs though.  If you can keep the last 6 or so inches of the tips stiff your performance will go up.  Thicker narrow tips are best performance wise.  To keep them from bending much reverse tapers are sometimes used in the tips.  Clear as mudd huh?

[kennym]

I think Marty covered it! Really.

[Glenn Newell]

Well explained Marty, I use reverse tapers in some of my recurves and a deflex-reflex longbow I make and that has improved performance. You see a lot of laminated longbows made with many tapered laminations and the limbs become whip ended and this slow then down and makes them kick as well...Glenn...