Removing Bamboo Backing

[Roy from Pa]

Have a deflex/reflex bow in the works here, and  the boo split on me. The Osage is such a nice piece of wood, that I'd like to salvage it. Any suggestions on how to get the boo off? Thought I would cut it off with the bandsaw, and stay just outside the glue line. Then use a power sander to get down to the Osage.. Thanks, Roy

[JoshB]

that's what I would do... If your belt sander has an aggressive belt on it I would use rasps to get it back down to the original wood to keep from going too far into the osage.

[Pat B]

What glue did you use. If TBIII you can heat the bow up to 150deg(F) and the glue will release. I did this with a heat gun and chisel on a hickory backed osage bow. Clean up both surfaces and re-glue.
 If another glue like urac or smooth-on you may have so saw the two apart. If you are careful you might recover both pieces.

[No-sage]

You can remove it with a heat gun if you used URAC.  Just go slow and pry it up as you move the heat along.

[Roy from Pa]

Used Urac, tried the heat gun and it was very slow going, came off in small chunks.

[Eric Krewson]

I have done it both ways, remove the bamboo to save the osage and removed the osage to save the bamboo.

When I am removing the bamboo, I grind almost all of the bamboo off on my belt sander except for about 1/16" and glue my new piece to this small strip of bamboo. This is on almost finished bows where I don't want to get into the osage.

[Roy from Pa]

Thanks Eric, that sounds like a plan. And it would leave a nice layer of boo between the next layer of whatever I put on. Might glue on some Zebra wood lams. Darn bamboo has given me fits over the years, splitting on me. But a BBO Bow sure is pretty when ya get a good one.