Kind of a dumb question...

[Wanabbowyer]

Are there any of you generous bowyers in Tennessee that would be willing to donate some tools to a  new guy? I have knives, sandpaper, files and some makeshift draw knife and scrapers. I have access to bamboo and a lot of it. Its good diameter but its green. I dont have money at all lol
The reason i ask is it would be nice to have a rasp or real draw knife i will continue to try and make bows lol either way. Figure it couldn't hurt since most of the people are pretty good here. Thank you and your welcome to  text .me 229 5965 kayde

[KenH]

Your toolkit is more than adequate for bamboo bows as well as stave-made.  There are stave-bow builders here who don't have any more, except a drawing bench or whatever it's called to hold the bow while you work on it.  I have an Indonesian friend on Java who builds excellent bamboo bows with no more.  Look at bow designs from that part of the world for inspiration -- loose laminates, bundle bows, whole and split culm and more. 

Stop cutting new green bamboo!  You want culms that are 6-8" diameter and at least a year old but not dead.  Unless you're building bundle bows... then you want 1/4" to 1/2" culms to bundle.  But you still want at least year-old sticks, not new growth.

[Wanabbowyer]

I have only cut one that was roughly 5inch in diameter lol and can you post a link

[KenH]

Depending on wall thickness, a 5" diameter culm could work.    Don't know what you want a link to.

I'm attaching the one photo I could find of the tip section of a bamboo slat bow I made a couple years back. 

You can just make out that I used the outer curved surface of the bamboo (unsanded) as the belly of the bow, and the flattened inner surface of the culm as the back.  You can even add a thin wooden lath to the back if you want.  Notice that I made wooden tips rather than trying to carve string notches into the 'boo.  If I remember right the bow was about 1.5" wide at the glued on forward handle, and a standard sort of pyramid shape about 56 or 58" long.  Draw weight was around 40#.

[Wanabbowyer]

Dude that's awesome. Did you tiller from the side or pre tiller?

[KenH]

Pre-tiller -- that is cut the tapers from handle to tip -- using a rough belt on my inverted hand-held belt sander.  Weight tillering is by scraping/fine sanding the back of the bow.