Ken, gave me some good advice once, when building a "new design" build the first one with the cheap black glass- its the cheapest- and some cheap lams- maybe even pine.
it will give you a good practice run, see if the design works, but will also give you a stack starting point- to calculate your desired stack-there is a stack calculator available.
for less than $40- you have a prototype, use some action boo, and you have some kind of a bow, that may work for someone else.