How do you pick board stock for laminations and how do you cut them out?

[Chad Orde]

Hey guys I really want to make some more bows but cant afford to keep buying wood laminations. Soo the questions is how do I pick the board stock out and how should I cut the pieces out? I know there is edge grain and flat and I would like to be able to learn to pick and cut both of them. Is there any good books out there?
Thanks

[Stiks-n-Strings]

I don't know if there is any special criteria for picking out lumber to cut lams but I would think you could use whatever you wanted as long as it was not trashy.
 As far a cutting them out your gonna need a good size bandsaw with a good heavy blade and a resaw fence setup to resaw them and then you will ahve to grind them on some type of sander or a lam grinder to get them good and flat and taper if you want to.
 I'm no authority on this subject but have alot of wood working experience and from everything I've read here that is my best educated guess.
 I'm sure someone will jump in and correct me if I'm wrong.
Kris

[Jason Scott]

That is what I do Kris.
I have made several bows from 1"x2"x6' hard maple boards I bought from the local indoor (low humidity a/c) lumber store for about $6. The board is really 3/4"x 1 1/2". I Rip them into 1/8" or so slats on a cheap 9" table band saw, but I use a good thicker blade from the saw shop, the thin ones that come with it are not good enough to cut straight enough through 1 1/2" stock. Then I sand them with my homemade lam sander. Similar to the one on the link below but because my model doesn't have the clearance I had to modify the design.   http://poorfolkbows.com/glass3.htm
After I cut the slats I store them in the house a/c so they don't get moisture. Keep them dry. I sand them to the desired thikness just before lay up. I don't have a moisture meter. If it has been humid lately I might set them in the hot box for a while too before I sand them.

As for grain, I have learned that since my lams are going between glass it is not that important, but you don't want knots or a really bad stock. The glass does 90% of the work. The most important thing regarding grain is that you don't want to use pieces that could cause twist. If the lams twist a little when you flex them you should offset the twist by flipping them over in each limb during the lay up so they cancel out. Make sense? This could keep you from having matched sets but it's usually no big deal to me really since the performance and shootablility are just fine. But I don't sell anything and my bows are for me and my friends. Nobody has complained yet. 'Hey Jason, this bow doesn't have matched set lams does it?'.

Go for it.

[Chad Orde]

Thanks for the information guys I will take this all into account. I need to make a lam grinder still and have a good table saw and a good sander to start with at least.

[Scott F]

That link to the lam grinder is awesome, I used it to make my thickness sander and it works great.

The post by Kris is almost exactly what I've done and it worked out well.

I've read that grain orientation doesn't matter too much with glass bows, but unless you are using clear glass and fancy lams, I think that the closer you can get to edge grained the better off you'll be.

I'm just starting with my recently-found bowmaking addiction so take my post however you choose to, but each bow that I've made so far have generated zero complaints  

[One bow was for me, the other were for my children, lol!)

[Jason Scott]

Depending on what type of sander you have you may be able to use it dual purpose as the lam grinder too. I made a plywood box That I mount my 4x36 table top sander to vertically and use the end of the belt sander to grind my lams.