Here's the final product of the butt splice experiment. Started as a hickory 3/4" by 6" by 48" board. Ripped into two billets and butt spliced and dowel pegged at the handle. A 1" thick red oak handle riser and a 3/16 lam on the back supports the splice. Dowels go through everything except the lam.
Became 66" ttt... 3/8" uniform thickness limbs, 2.5 wide pyramid style tapering to 1/4" wide mini lever-ish tips. One limb is flat sawn and the other is rift sawn (just what the board happened to become after being cut in half). The arrow pass is leather with a built up leather shelf and a jute wrap soaked in tb3. The finish is 1 coat walnut stain and 4 coats spar urethane dulled with fine steel wool.
Started as 45@28, then heat tempered to 50@28 but final tiller and sanding brought it right back down to 45@28. The purpose of this bow is turkey hunting.
I prefer heavier bows so it's a little light for my taste. I know 40-45# is a deadly and trustworthy weapon, but after growing accustomed to 70-80# weapons it's going to take some getting used to.
It has some quirks. Immediately after shooting 100 arrows, the flat sawn (top) limb has 2-3/4" of follow and the rift sawn (bottom) limb took 1-3/8". They're from inches apart on the same board and treated exactly the same except a second heat treating was done to the top to try to reduce a little of the set. Maybe someone can enlighten me as to why that happened. Is it the different grain orientation?
Anyway, after some (a lot) of fooling with brace height I found 6-1/4" to shoot quite pleasant. Just finished turning a dozen Douglas fir shafts matched to this bow. Still gotta fletch em up. Enough nonsense.. Here are the pics.
