bow construction

[MikeWinVA]

In building a laminated bow which gives better results:

Vacuum bagging the lay up or using a 2 piece top and bottom mold with a pressurized hose?

Also in building the thickness up, is it better to go with only a few laminations in the core under the glass or carbon skins, or is it better to use a greater number of much thinner layers.  This assumes that they both end up at the same thickness. I have access to some very thin veneers.

[MikeWinVA]

Additionally has anyone used West System epoxies for the layup?

[rmorris]

Vacuum bag would be a lot of work and the pressure hose is know to work great.

Your next question is a little harder... Depends on the type of bow and the weight you want to hit. If you want to do any kind of taper on the laminations , you will need to start with something thicker than a veneer.  Hill bows can easily use 4 laminations while recurve  and r/d longbows will typically use 2. The more laminations you use the more the cost and my guess would be adds weight to the limbs.

Last I use smoth on ea-40 because I know it works.

[beachbowhunter]

Generally thinner (more) lams will give you a better glue up through the limb wedge section as opposed to fewer thicker lams.

[Bowjunkie]

How thin are you talkin?

[Troy D. Breeding]

Veneers in the .020" to .030" can be used on any style bow. It doesn't matter if you use one lam in the .040" to .060" range or two veneers in the .020" to .030". They are all part of the parallel portion of the layup.

Like BB said the thinner the lam the better fit you get at the end of the fade or wedge.

[beachbowhunter]

Originally posted by Bowjunkie:
How thin are you talkin?

I make takedowns and cant speak for a one piece, but I try to keep individual lams at .080 and below. My parallels are usually around .050 and I use the thicker ones to grind into tapers. If I need a thicker lam to make a particular stack,I put it under the wedge so it doesn't have to bend.