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This page details my lamination attempts
This was my first attempt at a triple-laminate. Actually, at any sort of laminated bow. The materials were: lemonwood for the belly, purpleheart for the centre, hickory for the back. The first step was to cut and clean up the three strips, and then glue them together. For this I used Extramite (formerly Cascamite), and an old car tyre inner tube, wrapped around the length of the stave:
After this was dry, I unwrapped it, cleaned up any excess glue and leveled the sides with a plane. Then, I cut the belly into a rough taper with a rip-saw to save time..
..before working down the main shape with the plane. The handle section of the belly always needs a spokeshave, because of the concave shape:
The tips should be as thin as possible, but I'm always tooooo scared to make them as thin as they could be:
Close-up:
Whole shape before tillering (below) - notice how nice and straight it is! I prefer to resist bending it too much before I'm ready to properly tiller, as this allows me to use a plane for longer. The advantage I find of using the plane is that the taper is easier to control.
Ready for the tiller:
Bow at 20" on the tillering stick:
This bow ended out at what I assume is about 50lbs. I say assume, because I tried it on two different bowscales, borrowed from different people. One measured 45lbs, the other said 55lbs! It has a bit of hand-shock, so I will put a wrap around the handle at some point.
23rd March 2008. For my second attempt, I tapered the central purpleheart laminate. I did this by gluing in two stages: first, gluing the purpleheart onto the lemonwood; then tapering the purpleheart; finally, gluing the hickory on the back. The image below shows the bow at 23":
