TEST BOWS (pics p5) DATA P6 (NEW TEST P11 )

[kennym]

Hey folks,
I'm thinkin of building 2 test bows, identical except core wood. Would use black glass, so no veneers and more core.

What riser wood goes good with black glass?Was thinkin osage or zebra....

Was thinkin of makin one with the tried and true a-boo.

What would you all like to see as the other test core?  
Maple,hickory,red elm edge???

Would be nice to get ahold of some foam core also,may have to work on that and make it 3 bows!       :p

[drewsbow]

red elm should be a good choice

[mwmwmb]

I will be watching this one. Keep us posted Kenny.

[Apex Predator]

Kenny, I like osage, padauk, or birdseye maple with matching overlays.

[bjhaug]

I second Padauk.  I have a 1 piece recurve I made here that's got a Padauk riser with black glass and I think it's a sharp lookin bow!

[TNstickn]

I've been likin that red elm here lately.

[kennym]

Have you guys had any trouble with padauk? I've had a couple risers break (padauk I sold)and some checking probs.

Maybe with some glass or phenolic thru the grip??

Or padauk and osage??  I think both turn brown in a few years......

Also have a ton of curly maple I could incorporate in a riser.....

I was thinkin red elm core to test against the boo,because it made a good show in my hillbilly weight and bend test awhile back.  

[Kevin Breaux]

I'd like to see the difference between Hard rock Maple and action boo used as cores. The FDC and end result that is...

[bjhaug]

Kenny,

I'm 50/50 on the Padauk.  When I made my footed riser, Gabon Ebony and Lacewood, I used a 1/16 piece of padauk in between the lacewood and ebony, and the padauk was just ripped apart at the failure.  I originally thought it was the glue joint that failed, but it turned out to be the padauk.  

The other one is a solid riser (the bow with the black glass).  It was made from 10/4 padauk that I planed and sanded down.

I think - not an official diagnosis though - that padauk will do well with a lower weight bow (55lb and under), but if you were to go higher, you could be askin for trouble.

Just my two cents.

[Blake Dustin Adams]

I was thinking about this about a month ago.  

I would really like to see a two bows made with each type of wood core.  Use two different thicknesses and see what the total difference is between each.  That being the difference in draw weight between the two different core thicknesses, and the difference between the different core materials, all coming off the same form.

I wish I had the money cause I would try to do it in a heartbeat.  Unfortunately I have plenty of time to do it.

[Canadabowyer]

Kenny, when designing my new hybrid I built a series of bows off the same form with maple risers and all maple limbs just so when I tried different rates of taper,power lams, tip wedges etc. the base bow would be the same.I even cut the lams all from the same maple board to eliminate any wood differences.I used .040 brown glass on all the bows.The biggest surprise I got was how good a bow all maple made. They were very nice bows if a little plain looking.When I made the first one with different wood I used osage lams with hickory core and only 10 thousands more stack got me 8# more weight, everything else the same.I just finished one with all red elm flat grain lams and red elm edge grain core and it took .025 more red elm to get the same weight as the osage-hickory bow.That is as far as I have gotten with my experiments but I have learned that different core woods make a real difference in the weight and how a bow feels at the shot. I actually like the all maple so much I am going to hunt with one of the maple bows this year. I have yet to try an all a-boo bow on this form but on my mild R/D longbow form I got more springback off the form when A-boo was a large componet of the core. Bob

[Jesse Peltan]

Maple and boo.

[Holm-Made]

Bocote riser block looks good with black glass but hey....Bocote looks good with anything.

[kennym]

Thanks for the input guys!

Bob,I have noticed a diff in #s too with red elm coming in a little lite and red cedar coming in even lighter.

Also noticed a small amount of set in a-boo cored bows when laid back on the form a year later.

There may be a reason the old bows were made with mostly maple!

[Dmaxshawn]

     Just sitting back trying to learn something from you experts on here.  Waiting to see the results.  

Shawn

[wihill]

I'm curious too - I think the popularity of action boo is it's consistency, though it's performance is no doubt right up there.

(Secretly I'm rooting for the Elm - but hard rock Maple is tried and true....)

[bigbellybuck]

I read in a book about a bowyer who spine tested his lams as part of his process of selecting them for a bow. It showed a picture of a homemade rig sort of like an arrow spine tester. He said sometimes even lams cut from the same board(probably a large board) would spine test way different. I seem to have way less trouble hitting projected weight when I use actionboo versus wood lams. I have only made one bow with maple, but it would really smoke an arrow.

[sulphur]

Hickory, hickory, hickory!!  osage looks great with black glass and so does bocote. IMHO

[snag]

How do you "hit draw weight"? It seems there are so many variables when selecting the glass thickness, limb veneers and how thick, etc. Do you try and get within 5# and then file and sand down to the weight you want? It sure seems a less than perfect science.  

[kennym]

Waaay less than perfect science!! Keep good written records of every bow you make(you won't remember,so don't try!).

Riser length
Limb length
limb width
stack thickness
rate of taper
# of tapers
# of parallels
glass thickness
glue brand
I'm prolly forgettin somethin!

I think even the best bowyers miss weight,so don't feel bad if you don't get it right on.

If you have enough limb,you can pike a couple inches off and gain 5-6#.

I polled a year or so back,seems most like 20-25% glass in the stack.

Some woods make heavier limbs for the thickness of lams. Like hickory vs. red cedar

It is a guessing game,thats what makes it interesting!!