making lams for glass bows

[moosemoose]

Its been 20+ years since I made a bow and I have the bug to do it again... except the prices have gone up so much i'm going to cut my own lams out of a 2x6 piece of hard rock maple.  I'm curious to know if...

1.  A band saw or table saw is preferable.

2.  You fellows grind your own tapered lams.

3.  Cutting the lams from the piece of stock as edge grain or flat grain would produce more cast.

[marty z]

1 Band saw

2 Yes

3 I do edge grain

[kennym]

I'm with Marty....

I use a 1/4" thick x 2" x 36" taper sled with the bandsaw,then grind them. Saves grinding from sawing a parallel.

[moosemoose]

Kenny would you have a picture of that contraption?

[JamesV]

I taper my cores with a planer using a sled. Cut the core as long as you want the bow, plane to the proper thickness for the stack then cut the taper from both ends to where the fades start.

[kennym]

I'll look, it is just a 1/4" thick taper in the taper rate you want, like .002 per inch

[moosemoose]

I guess a sled would be like a big wedge then... thanks

I don't know why I was going there anyway I can't even cut straight parallels on my band saw is there a band saw adjustment thread somewhere?  I should have just bought the expensive lams and been done with it... arrgh!

[ChristopherO]

Moosemoose,
Have you checked Kennym's website?  He grinds and sells excellent lams out of many different woods and his prices are not out of line.
He is so humble that he didn't direct you to his website but gave you assistance on how to do your own, instead.  But, I will blow his horn for him as I, and many others on this forum, are happy customers of his products.  
Do yourself a favor and at least check out his site (click on his avatar) to see if this will be a better option before you spend too much time making saw dust.
BTW, he, also, stocks SmoothOn Glue and fiberglass.

[Dmaxshawn]

I get all my components from Kenny.  He's a fine gentleman to deal with and very knowledgeable.  Prices are good and top quality materials.  I wanted to make my own too but after seeing Kennys product it was a no brainer for me.  

Shawn

[moosemoose]

thanks guys!

[kennym]

Thanks guys!  

[kennym]

http://tradgang.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=125;t=001165;p=1

Look on page 1.....

[moosemoose]

Hey thanks for digging up that photo up for me, for some reason I associated the term sled with horizontal... and well that just wasn't working out in my head.  I really liked the pic of your inspector too.  I thought I would try to upload a photo of my own and ask if I labeled the grain correctly.  

[marty z]

YEP

[ChristopherO]

I would not call that exactly edged grain as the rings run, very pronounced, across the wide and narrow side areas of the board.  Do you see the far right side of the board where all the lines are tighter but open up more on the left half of the board?  That tells you what portion of the tree this piece of lumber was cut from.  With the rings terminating on the left side as they are this says that this board was cut at somewhat of an angle to the length of the log.  
Look at a round log from the end with all the rings showing a circle.  With the log lying flat cut off a strip lenght wise off that log.  What is on top of that strip is the bark and, depending on how much of the trunk you shaved with it, some wood.  Viewing the top of the log you just scalped all the violated rings you just cut through show up in lines running lenght wise with the log.  That is Plane Sawn Lumber.
If you take that log and split it into quarters and then cut lumber from the sides of the quarters that is quarter sawn, or as some will call it, edge sawn lumber.  
The first few chapters of the Traditional Bower's Bible 1 explains this pretty well as do wood working books.
Hope this helps.