making a bamboo backed bow 1st timer.

[Renacs]

i'm making a osage bamboo back longbow. The osage piece that i have to work with is 59" long. with a 1" hadle section 1 1/4" fades for 6" then tapers to a 1/2".  the thickness as of now is about a 1/2". My questions is do you think i can get a good shooter from the osage core. And by that i mean a 40-45# at 27", with min. set?
                                                                          Thanks Joe

[bubby]

Easy as long as you don't screw up, your limbs could start at 3/8" thick and still have plenty of material but it won't hurt to have more to take off, cause you can't put it back on

[barebo]

I was in the same place as you - posted a few days ago to get some advice. My Osage was 1-3/4" wide and 60" long and 7/16" thick. I only thinned the Bamboo to 1/4" and had to thin the Osage a LOT to get it to tiller. The Osage belly now is just 1/4" thickness. I have it braced now and at 20" of draw it's about 65# which is more than I need. I narrowed the limbs to 1-1/4" at the grip and tapered to 7/16" tips. I glued an 8" piece of Walnut on for a riser with a 6" piece of Zebrawood for a grip. The Walnut ended up having a pretty steep taper to make the fadeout into the limbs. The fact that there isn't a lot of working limb length means that you need to get the limbs working pretty close to the fades, or actually right to them. I also glued 4" of reflex in and it's holding just over an inch now which is fine for me.
I'd only suggest that for 45# you really need to get the Bamboo thin. Good Luck !!!

[Stixnstones]

get that boo down to 1/8", shape the boo into the profile of the bow before glue up and induce perry reflex while glueing up.

[bushboy]

Yes osage will make. A great belly.i'm by no means an expert on this but have made a few that turned out good but more that did not ,learning a bit in the process. 59" is quite short to start with Imho but doable.i would tiller and temper the osage to about a. 20lb letting it bend thru the handle a bit prior to glue.mate the bamboo as perfect as you can get it trying to space the nodes evenly.glue up with no more than 2" reflex using rubber inner tubes criss crossed from center out to the tips and back again,plus. Any c, clothline style clamps you may have.getting the osage and bamboo perfectly mated is the most important!good luck

[Dances with squirrels]

Yes Joe, it's doable. The last bamboo backed osage I made is 58" ntn, and 58# @ 28". It is 1 1/8" wide at the flares. It is a d/r profile.

When making shorter bows such as these, it helps to design and tiller the bow with as much working limb as possible. I made the handle 4" long as usual but kept the distance from there to the flares (widest part of the limbs) short... an inch or 1 1/4  or so, I'd have to check... and the dips were brought into working limb gently... but soon. I can take some actual measurements off that bow if it'll help... pics too.

[Renacs]

Thanks from the advice. I'm trying to make use of some short pieces of osage and this seems like a good way to play with it, but I still love chasing a ring.