Which woods for core lams

[Mo_coon-catcher]

A buddy and I are wanting to try our hands at glass longbows. We have done several dozen selfbows and backed bows. But we’d both like a hill style glass longbow or two. We both like our longbows to be either straight or slight deflex. So we’ll probably use a flat form for glue up. I have some staves I’m willing to cut into lams, I’m looking for opinions on what would be the best cores. And a good thickness to make them as lam blanks before they are tapered. I have black cherry, persimmon, black locust, and white ash that I’m willing to cut up. Which would be the best to cut for both looks and performance. Or just cut them all and experiment? I’m looking for one pulling 70# at 26” and he is wanting 60# at 29”.

Thanks,
Kyle

[Bowjunkie]

I like cherry. It's pretty, light, and lively, but I think you should try them all.

It's pretty tough to give you a thickness to resaw the lams when we don't know how thick they will be finished, or what equipment you have or your processes are for bringing them to size. Are you doing them yourself or slicing them and then sending then out to be ground?

[fujimo]

for the average #50 bow i cut my yew lams at about 3/16 or .200 thick- that being also that the yew lams are about 10% thicker than other lams for the same poundage.- thats on a 4 lam kenny m bow.

a lot is going to depend on how coarse your blade is, how much tooth mark you are trying to get rid of etc etc.
if wood is not an issue, i would cut them 1/4" thick.

[Pat B]

With the options you mentioned I think the cherry would be best.

[Mo_coon-catcher]

Resizing and grinding te lams when we’re ready to use them are no problem. We will be using equipment in my friends fathers cabinet shop. After they are rough cut in the table saw we will feed them into a large belt sanding planer to get a precise thickness as the sander is computerized to give a precise thickness and a flat sanding, and taper them using an angle holding jig on a large sanding belt. So later thinning and taper grinding will be no problem.
Using the cherry works for me. I’ve been trying to make some heavy elnglish longbows out of it. But have trouble getting about 50#. And that still needed an pretty large dimensioned now to do it. So if might as well get some use out of it somewhere.

Kyle