Ilana's Bow - Traditional Bowhunter

[wharvey]

In the currant issue of Traditional Bow Hunter there is an article about a longbow built along the guidelines of a bow in "Building Your First Fiberglass Longbow" In the Oct/Nov 2005 Traditional Bow Hunter.

The original bow in question is a straight back longbow. Jason Jelinek uses 0.050 fiberglass for front and back, a 0.25 in core, and a 16 inch riser to build the 66 inch (65" nock to nock) longbow. The resulting draw weight is about 45 lbs, which is what I am wanting. The bow core is not tapered and he gets the tiler by cutting the bow in a pyramid style, leaving the middle 28 inches full width and tapering the outer limbs down to 3/8". This results in a circular tiller?

It seems that his process is pretty simple. My question is, will this method result in a decent smooth shooting bow? He also using G2 epoxy cured for several days at room temperature instead of a hot box.

Any suggestions to improve this, other than using multiple laminations for the core?  For that matter where can you buy 0.25 laminations? The thickest I see is 0.09 inches.

[rkmnt2]

Hey Bill,
    I don't have all the answers for ya but I can give you a little boost maybe to get you started. I don't think I saw that article or maybe I just had a selective reading disorder but either way, it sounds like it's something fairly cheap to try and see what you end up with. Use locally available products instead of exotics for the first 1 or however many it takes to get a "keeper".
   First off...I'm pretty sure you can buy 1/4" maple at Lowe's or Home Depot. And I don't know about G2 epoxy but I'm sure there are a lot of alternatives to the big names most bowyers use that will do the job just fine, but you will probably want to be a bit more careful about leaving the bow in a hot place or the glue might soften enough to cause problems. So don't leave it in your car all day while you're at work on a 90 degree day and you should probably be allright. There's been a lot of guys on here that have used a lot of other glues...West System is probably the most widely available. Do a search on here to get other opinions and judge for yourself.
  Hope this helped you get one step closer.
     Have fun....Don