Never made and ERC bow before, I cut some long dead cedar off my neighbor's place to make gizmos, it had been on the ground for at least 20 years but the inside was sound. I was cautioned about using this wood for bows but after finishing my squirrel rifle I needed a change of direction and made an attempt to make a bow out of this wood.
I put a 1/8" hickory backing on the cedar stave and glue the two together with about 2" of reflex.
As I began tillering I made several observations about my combination; one, you can tiller away poundage at breakneck speed with cedar, and two what looks like perfect tiller may not throw a good arrow without some serious limb tweaking, I am still tweaking.
As for performance, I am down to 38#@25" and getting slightly less than average speed, I suspect I have some tillering glitches to find still.
The bow is 65" NTN, 38#@25", 1 1/2" wide tapering from mid limb to a little less than 1/2" tips, a little over built "just in case". I added a curly maple handle and tip overlays so it will be a pretty bow if it holds up long enough to "make a bow" and require finishing.
I tried aqufortis stain on a test piece of hickory and cedar, the hickory came out a beautiful chestnut color, the cedar turned almost black.
It is still in the white, has about 50 arrows through it so far with no signs of failure and is holding about 1" of backset unstrung. The limbs both have a small punky knot on the edge which I filled with a bunch of Zap A Gap extra thin superglue and will give both a superglued thread wrap if the bow holds up.
