Need help with hill style bow build.

[johandre]

Hi Tradgangers im busy building a hill style bow my lams are cut and ready. but I need help with the riser. how long should the fade outs be? my riser"s total length will be 18 inches. I'm going to put 2 lams om the back and one on the belly.

[Todd Cook]

On mine I leave a 4 inch section in the center full thickness, and the fadeouts ramp from there to the ends. On a 18 inch riser( mine are 15), fadeouts would be 7 inches on each side.

[JamesV]

What Todd said.............. 4" in the center and ramp down from there, fades will be 7" on each side for an 18" riser.

[canopyboy]

X3 on the 4" handle and the rest as fades.

I make my Hill style risers very short (like 13-1/2") and have found that the most important thing is the last 1" of your fade outs. You should be able to see through the wood at the very end, and at 1" from the end it should still be only about a sixteenth. Farther than that you can start to ramp up quickly as it no longer affects the bending of the limb much and you're only limited by the flexibility of your belly lam.

[johandre]

thanks allot guys. I made a new rizer and was able to get the fade outs right.

now another question can I use all parallels in my hill  bow or do I have to use a taper as well? If I use a taper what taper should I use? my total stack is about .43 of an inch

[monterey]

You should have some taper.  How much depends on the width of the limb at the fades and the tips.  The less your limb tapers in width, the more it should taper in thickness.  

If you describe your intended width measurements, someone here can probably come up with some suggestions.

[canopyboy]

Tapered lams for sure. Since a Hill bow is generally narrow, there's not a lot of room for taper in the profile. Average width at the fades seems to be around 1-1/8 going to 1/2 or 7/16 at the nocks. Total taper in the lam stack seems to be around 0.004-0.006 with some of the stouter bows going to 0.008. These measurements are mainly from bows from Howard Hill Archery, but include some other bowyers as well. I've nominally settled on 0.006 and have been happy with it.