Wood ? for bowyers

[mooseman1967]

I have a wood question for the bowyers out there. A friend of mine is building me a three piece hybrid out of black palm. My question is about the properties of this wood for veneers and riser. I'm figureing on black glass one side clear with black palm under it other side. One side or the other be better for the black glass? The riser will be double radius with birds eye maple in the center and 1/8" phenolic between both radius. After reading some of the other posts on here I started questioning the properties of black palm and wondered if anyone had experiance with it. My friend has been building bows for a couple years now and starting to play with the more exotic woods. This is the first bow I've had truly costom for me and hope that it comes out. Thanks Dave

[Sigmazxcs]

Hey, I'm not too sure about wood properties, but I'm quite sure if you're gonna go ahead with black palm, chances are you should have the glass on the back.
If you wanna cut the risk, try adding the phenolic as an I-beam right through the center. I'm adding a 1/4" phenolic strip down the center of my grey actionwood riser, with another 1/4" strip of the same phenolic as an accent just half an inch from the back of the riser. That will definitely support the limb pads.

[John Scifres]

I have made a couple black palm selfbows.  It is extremely dense and strong.  Very heavy in mass.  I would think there would be better choices for glass bows.  It isn't particularly attractive either.

[Bivyhunter]

That stuff is miserable to saw blades, very high silica content. I've used it for limb veneers once, but it was so dark it pretty much blacked out under the glass.

[mooseman1967]

Well we changed things up a bit from what the origanal plans were. Still have the black palm but went with padouk instead of maple. Here's some pics of where it's at for now. I knew the black palm would darken some under the glass but to me it's fine the way it is. So there is no confusion the limbs are reverse mount and of course this is the rough cutout. Saved some of the riser pieces for tip overlays.

 
 
 

[eagleone]

Thanks for posting an update!  I think black palm looks sweet but I have zero knowledge with glass. I gotta think it will be fine in the riser though.  Sure looks cool.

[heartlandbowyer]

Dave here is a couple more pics still got some material to remove but it starting to look like a bow!
 

[mooseman1967]

Thank you for the pics Cory.

[mooseman1967]

Not the greatest pics but here's the bow complete. Shoot's real good 62"  55@28" ran it through the chrono this afternoon at 173 fps with a 642grain arrow. Thanks again Cory for building this bow for me, I really like it. Oh and Bonnie thinks the name "autumn affair" is quite appropiate. Dave