Originally posted by Charlie Lamb: Robert,I built my first string follow bow about 25-30 years ago and prefer them to just about any other style longbow.I spent many years with laminated bamboo covered with fiberglass and enjoyed every minute as well as taking many pieces of big game with them.For a while now I've been using laminated bamboo string follow longbows without fiberglass. Natural bamboo for a back.For my purposes I find that the bamboo with no glass surpasses most other longbows of the Hill style. They are smoother in the hand at the shot, draw sweetly when built long enough, give up very little in speed when using decent weights (50+ lbs.} and they are almost always deadly silent with normal arrow weights.