Advice on maple backed cherry

[jthompson1995]

I'm working on a curly maple backed cherry bow for my wife. It's spliced in the handle, very straight grain on the cherry with approx. 1/8th inch curly maple backing. It's about 64" long, 2" wide at the fades, 1 3/4" wide mid limb and tapers to 1/2" tips. I'm aiming to get 30# @ 26", just something she can target shoot with (for now).

I glued everything up w/ tb3 and got it roughed down to floor tiller but the cherry belly is already less than 1/4" thick and I feel like if I pulled it to full draw it would pull 70-80#. I've heard cherry likes to be wide and flat but I don't want to get it too thin and get down to just a maple bow. Can I safely make the bow narrower than 2" (side tiller kind of) to take the weight down? Any suggestions on what a beginning width would be?

I'm really please with how this bow is coming along and don't want to screw it up. I'd love to get it done for Christmas but I still have to build a tillering tree. Maybe it'll be a little bit late for Christmas.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[RyanY]

You should be able to take down the thickness to less than 2" but I wouldn't go less than 1.5". Maple and cherry sounds like a great combination seeing as how maple is strong in tension and cherry is strong in compression. I would start to tiller from the sides as this will help get the draw weight down and reduce mass. You shouldn't have to worry about cherry's flaws for bow wood if you have that maple backing. Good luck.

[medicinewheel]

You should be able to take down the thickness to less than 2" but I wouldn't go less than 1.5".  ...

'Width' you meant, not 'thickness', right!? 

Yes, 1.5" should be good.

[Pat B]

You can reduce the width if the belly is getting too thin. You should have enough bow length for her draw length so you will have to make the bow narrower to reduce the weight.
  Maple should be a good backing for cherry but one problem I can anticipate on this bow is you used curley maple, not a good candidate for a backing strip. The curly grain has too many violations with all of it's curls, etc. It might make an OK belly wood but I would be leery of it as a backing..

[snedeker]

The curly backing will probably hold out at his 30# I think. 

[jthompson1995]

Thanks for the replies.

I figured the curly maple would be ok for the light weight but made very sure to get a really straight grained, rift sawn piece of curly maple to be as safe as possible. I may go even a little lighter on teh weight so she doesn't have any issues drawing it. I'm trying to get my wife interested in archery and she said if I made her a bow, she wanted it to be a "pretty" bow. Maybe one day i'll even get her to go hunting  .

I'll get to narrowing the limbs and see how it goes

[sulphur]

when backing a bow with hickory or ash its important to remember or have a good idea of how thick you belly wood is going to end up.  Your backing will remain 1/8 thick but your belly will keep getting thinner, especially if you make it wide.  Ryano advised once to never go any wider the 1.5"  seems to be a pretty good rule of thumb.  although it may be necessary to start out with a thinner backing strip on a light poundage bow.

[Pat B]

You can also reduce the thickness of a sawn out backing strip as long as you keep it flat, level and not too thin.

[medicinewheel]

You can also reduce the thickness of a sawn out backing strip as long as you keep it flat, level and not too thin.

I even taper backings on clued up blanks towards the tips by hand.
May also reduce thickness to a point!?