question about osage laminations

[eric101]

I'm new to trad bows but wanting to build a laminated longbow with Osage i have and was wondering if you have to have a core wood of another type or you can just layer the Osage.I'm wanting to copy my Savannah.Has anyone done this and will it work?Any advice would be really appreciated thanks.

[Hermann From Bavaria]

hey eric

you can use 2 layers osage. one core(tapered), one belly. for backing i prefer on osage bamboo. but hick would do it also good i think.

greets herm

[Tyler Langston]

I have a longbow thats getting ready to be made with 3 layers of osage one core lam of glass and two outter lams of glass.

[eric101]

Tyler,are you building your bow or someone else?I've watched a few build along and I'm really impressed with the skill and knowledge of the Bowyer's on here and the way they help each other.I'd like to see pics of your bow when it is finished.
     Thanks Eric.

[Walt Francis]

Eric, I have had several bows made with Osage veneers.  Some of the bows were made with Osage cores and others with action-boo, or boo only cores.  The bows with boo only cores had/have the least amount of hand shock and were faster.  My thoughts are the Osage cores added a lot of extra weight to the limb compared to boo.

[Holm-Made]

Osage can be used as veneers or as as cores.  Great Northern bow company has been using it in their cores for something like 20-30 years and they make some great bows.  I use it just as veneers but I have a system I like to use with full length action boo cores.

I agree with Walt as far as it adding extra weight to the total stack when osage is used exclusively.  I think it would be noticeable on a deep cored fairly straight longbow.  I doubt you would notice a thing on a shallow cored recurve or highly R/D bow.  Just not alot of core material on most recurves to make a difference, especially when your talking about putting .002-.003" per running inch of total taper on the lam stack.  Chad

[eric101]

Walt,Chad thanks guys that's the kind of info I'm looking for to help me decide how i need to make my bow and the materials that work well together.Thanks a lot guys.

[razorsharptokill]

If you are cutting lams from billets/boards, make sure you get mated lams glued to each other( for each lam). A lam out of a different board will have different qualities. I didn't get mine matched properly in a BBO longbow and one limb was way stiffer than the other.