Materials choice

[jrstegner]

Black walnut is my favorite core wood. My experience has been similar to Kenny's.

[Appalachian Hillbilly]

Cherry? Anyone used cherry as a core? I have 2 bows with cherry cores and they are on par with everything else I have in the same weight range.

As a new bowyer, but not new to wood and woodworking,  a lot is going to depend on design and how much  weight you intend for the bow to be. What I might do on a riser for a 30 lb bow, I would not do on a 50+ pound bow.

When I hear of failures, I always want to know all the details. Was it the wood or the craftman's fault.

I love trying new things and I am sure some.of them will not work and some one that has been there before could have predicted it. I still probably would have tried it though...

[Buggs]

I've used Cherry as a belly lam with Maple. Read about it's low internal hysteresis in the Bowyer Bible and though why not try it? Made a nice shooting bow. I have thought a Bamboo and Cherry combo might be nice.
It sure is nice wood to work with.

Found an old pic. Used more Cherry than I remembered!

[onetone]

Is that the Traditional Bowyer’sBible, or something else?

[Kirkll]

I’ve used quite a bit of cherry and other fruit woods over the years as core lams, but prefer Rock hard maple on the belly side for compression ratings. Fruit wood has different characteristics than nut wood does, and grain orientation is a much bigger factor…. Clear quarter sawn walnut is a good core wood but it’s more brittle than cherry wood. Use the same woods in a flat grain orientation and it’s a different beast all together…. Hickory is seriously high tensile and compression strength, and if you want to build a hot rod, that’s the ticket…. But it’s not going to last for years and years…it’s just to brittle. Probably make an excellent one and done flight bow…. Lol

I often wonder if these various different soft domestic hardwoods and fruitwoods  are going to hold up for 60-70 years. We know the rock hard maple will, and I’d bet good money on high quality bamboo longevity.   

I’ve got a bunch of lams I should sell to you guys that are still tinkering with different core woods. I’ve pretty much dialed in my tried and true combos because I want my bows out lasting my grand kids.

 Old growth Douglas Fir makes an incredible core too. I have quite a few bows out there still shooting great with Doug Fir lams that are 10-12 years old. It’s very similar to Yew wood properties, only less oily, and lighter weight.

Kirk

[Appalachian Hillbilly]

I can often find good tight grained quarter sawn cherry 3x3 blanks as well as hard maple 3x3 blanks. Bamboo is hard to come by.

When glued up, what effect does flat sawn have on lams? I know in self bows you have to chase the growth ring, but in glued up lams, what does it do?

I have been using vertical grain in my lams and picking the tightest grain lumber I can find.

[Kirkll]

The vertical straight grain wood gives better limb stability qualities that flat grain material in your core stock. Do some deflection tests with it some time and see for yourself.  veneers are not an issue at .025 or less.

The part about bamboo i like is it's homogeneous nature, hardness, and tensile strength. Problem is.... Finding high quality moso bamboo flooring, or even stair tread material in laminated vertical grain configuration is tough to do any more. When Higuera Hardwoods quit making it, i switched to a totally different product i'm using now. All bamboo is not created equal. Where it comes from and how its treated for insects and manufactured in to finished material makes a huge difference. Some of that crap is pretty limp.

I've still got a bunch of the vertical grain natural color that was not carbonized and heat treated. Some guys like it, but i don't because it doesn't have the same strength or deflection qualities as the heat treated "Amber colored "bamboo. I use it for accent lines in risers, mosaics, and overlays sometimes, but wont use it in my limbs any more personally.

If somebody is interested in buying some of this natural vertical grain stuff please send me a PM.

     Kirk

[Buggs]

Black Cherry; Prunus serotina   

Its not the same as fruit Cherry

[Buggs]

Is that the Traditional Bowyer’sBible, or something else?

Yes, the TBB
It has to be #1 or #2, in one of the sections by Tim Baker

[Mad Max]

The vertical straight grain wood gives better limb stability qualities that flat grain material in your core stock. Do some deflection tests with it some time and see for yourself.  veneers are not an issue at .025 or less.



I've still got a bunch of the vertical grain natural color that was not carbonized and heat treated. Some guys like it, but i don't because it doesn't have the same strength or deflection qualities as the heat treated "Amber colored "bamboo. I use it for accent lines in risers, mosaics, and overlays sometimes, but wont use it in my limbs any more personally.



     Kirk

In BBB's Bamboo back and belly the only one to be heat treated is the belly.
Having said that, I agree heat treated boo for lams in a glass bow is better.
Do you think the stranded boo you are using is better than the vertical and why?

[Buggs]

Is there some reason you guy's don't use natural Bamboo and mill it to spec?

I know it's a lot more work to process, and maybe not as stout as the laminated flooring?

[kennym]

Is there some reason you guy's don't use natural Bamboo and mill it to spec?

I know it's a lot more work to process, and maybe not as stout as the laminated flooring?

I bought some once and milled lams from it.  Too much labor cost to be able to sell the lams, if I was doing a bow here and there for myself I might think about it more...

[Kirkll]

The vertical straight grain wood gives better limb stability qualities that flat grain material in your core stock. Do some deflection tests with it some time and see for yourself.  veneers are not an issue at .025 or less.



I've still got a bunch of the vertical grain natural color that was not carbonized and heat treated. Some guys like it, but i don't because it doesn't have the same strength or deflection qualities as the heat treated "Amber colored "bamboo. I use it for accent lines in risers, mosaics, and overlays sometimes, but wont use it in my limbs any more personally.



     Kirk

In BBB's Bamboo back and belly the only one to be heat treated is the belly.
Having said that, I agree heat treated boo for lams in a glass bow is better.
Do you think the stranded boo you are using is better than the vertical and why?

I would stay with the vertical grain laminated material if i could still get the amber carbonized heat treated material in a moso bamboo that i trusted. It was good stuff. But a lot of this stuff out there is garbage.
My opinion comes from years of remodeling homes and replacing bamboo floors that didn't hold up well at all with Higuera bamboo. This isn't just a personal preference.... I'm talking real time experience with this cheap lumber liquidator crap they call flooring. There is a good reason its getting hard to find. I put the good stuff in a Family  beach cabin that had a lot of abuse for many years, and it held up well with no cupping or delamination. That's why i used it exclusively for my bows.

This stranded material i'm using now is heat treated and pressed together with an epoxy resin and has the highest janka rating for hardness there is right now. It has good defection properties and the same , if not a little better defection rate as the vertical grain material and excellent homogeneous tensile strength. It probably has better compression strength too due to the resin vs fiber strand ratio. But honestly... i've never tested the compression. 

The only down side to it is that the mass weight is a bit higher than the action boo was, and i'm hesitant to use it as a soul lamination in a D shape limb design like i would the vertical grain action boo. I just stick to maple on the belly side for compression, and i know that's going to hold up well. I haven't seen any difference in my bow performance at all using it either.

this is what i'm using.

https://www.calibamboo.com/product-java-fossilized-solid-bamboo-flooring-7006003801.html


Kirk

[Mad Max]