core wood and lams

[Coach]

I make all wood bows.  Never have made a glass bow.I have made several BBI Hill style bows.  They seem to perform very well.  Have made string follow, straight limb and some slight reflex.  I am curious if several wood lams would make a better performing bow rather than just an all ipi wood bow with an bamboo backing. I guess my main question is there an advantage to lams over a solid wood bow that is backed with bamboo, especially if the wood is ipi or osage.  Am interested in your experience or comments on this subject.  Coach

[Bowjunkie]

Do you mean to compare all wood lam bows to a bamboo backed bow with a single piece of wood for the core?

I've made both and while there's not a big difference in performance or amount of set that they take, the multi-lam wooden bow, like a bamboo/osage/osage bow for instance, is easier to bend into various shapes during glue up. So, you can inflict more drastic reflex and deflex in them.

They may be more durable because a defect in a single piece piece of wood can be more seious than a the same size defect in a bow of multiple lams... for instance, any defect may only go through one lam, not all the way through the bow.

On such a tri-lam bow, you can put a lighter/less dense wood in the center, like red cedar, bamboo, or walnut, to reduce mass weight and increase performance, but still keep osage or ipe on the belly to handle the compression and be impervious to bumps and dings.