Ambow-dextrious all wood Tri Lam (1st attempt pics!)

[Osagetree]

Being a little short on selfbow wood, I decided to try making a tri lam all wood bow. And since my buddy wanted to get in on it we decided our first tri lam would be ambidextrious in the riser area. This way we could both shoot the same bow that we made together.

Neither of us has ever made a tri lam so keep that in mind. We have only our own ideas and theories, obviously we had no blue prints either. All this is as we go and off the cuff!

I oredered a fire hose and fittings from Binghams and the form is put together from stuff at Lowes. This is our second form. The first form we made was a little extreme, so we stepped back and just made this one with a little curve out towards the tips.
 

Materials were purchased from an auction site and they were rough sawn. So, we had to make a thickeness grinder so that we could size the lams and get a flat surface finish on them. The bow will have a hickory backing, black walnut parrelel core, an Ash riser and osage belly lam's.
 

Here is the profile after a little shaping. Not real purdy though!
 

I don't know what I was thinking, but this is my first attempt to make an ambidextrious handle. Some how, both rests are right handed???? What a stupid mistake!
 
 

So, here is what I did. Now not only is it ambidextrious, it will also allow you to use either limb you choose as the top limb regardles of wich hand you want to shoot with. This might be an original???
 
 

A little shaping of the tips and knocks.
 

Now let's see how the tiller looks.

[Osagetree]

I could tell from the start it was not going to be the best looking bow in the world
 

Here is the profile at around brace.
 

Tiller at about full draw.
 

Full draw and shooting with some good authority, but the tiller is not great!
 

This bows stats ened up being 60" knock to knock, 50# @ 28".

Any comments on this one or any advice on my next one would be appreciated!

[hormoan]

You are doing great Joe    How can that be  :D  I can still see fiberglass in your future  :eek:

[kennym]

Looks pretty good to my untrained selfbow eye!
Those fulldraw pics never look right to me on my bows,I think if you cant the bow a little,one limb is closer to the camera or somethin.

[Osagetree]

Originally posted by hormoan:
I can still see fiberglass in your future   :eek:  

Maybe if I win kenny's lam give away!


And Brent,,, I never did glue myself pemanantly to that work bench.
 

[elk ninja]

Lookin' good!  Lookin' FUN(ky).
Mike

[bacon]

Quaddextrious ?

[wingnut]

Not bad for a first attempt.  You might try a little taper in your core lam.  Say about .002" per inch.  That will allow the mid to outer limb to bend better.

Mike

[bentpole]

That Joe's got talent!

[drewsbow]

Thats cool :0)

[Shaun]

How's the unbraced profile? Did you end up with string follow? I like Mike's tip about using a tapered core lam. Looks like that one shoots an arrow. Good work.

[bayoulongbowman]

I wish I knew how to do that ...thats cool  

[Osagetree]

It took on alot of set. Probably more do to my tillering! I'll get a picture up later.

I like the taper idea, just can't firgure out how to make them with any accuracy.

Any tips???

[Pat B]

Thats a cool bow, Joe. Not only can you shoot either right or left handed but up side down or right side up!      Pat

[Wulomac]

I like the flexibility of that bow!!! Looks good, too! Good job!!!
Wells

[Bjorn]

Nice work! Keep at it you are doing great!!

[vermonster13]

Pretty cool Joe especially for a first try.

[madness522]

Neat idea on the ambi shelf.

[Dick in Seattle]

I really appreciated your thread... I've been edging up to doing some bow making, but not there yet.   i will say that when I do, my "ambidextrous" riser will be simple... no shelf at all.   I like the old longbows that you shot off of your hand, so to me, that's the easy approach.  Thanks very much for posting your process.

Dick in seattle

[Shaun]

Joe, lots of ways to make a taper. For hand tools you can use a plane and do it like tapering an arrow with a series of increasing length plane strokes. Dean T uses a jointer in one of his videos if I remember right, doing the same thing, a series of increasing length passes over the blade. You could mark it out and use a rip saw by hand or table saw. Guys making lams use a drum sander and a tapered board (platen) to feed the piece under the sander.

0.002 x 36" is a little less than 3/32" dif from end to end.

Party on and keep posting pics.