I'm having a new bow built and the question of having bamboo laminations under the quilted maple has come up. I can get yew included in the price of the bow, and the bamboo is an extra $40. I'm wondering if it is worth it?

Thanks.

LBB

I am not as big of fan of bamboo as some so would not pay extra for it myself.I am sure they are many that think different however so you will just have to decide if you want to or not.Ask the bowyer what he thinks.If he is truthfull he will tell you any difference it makes in his bows.

While looking into a new R/D bow this question was one that I asked each bowyer. Of the top three Fedora,RER,and Chastain they all gave a nod to Bamboo. From my notes said it seems that it tends to make the bow smoother and slightly faster. I shot a fedora recurve with bomboo cores and it was indeed what Mike and the others said, it did feel smoother and I thought quite a bit faster.I ordered my Fedora bow with bamboo cores and can't wait to shoot it.

I'm no bower but I love Bamboo, I have a bamboo Ipe bow and a bamboo fly rod. The bow is light and very quick and shoots great. The fly rod is like a living thing in your hands, bends clear to handle when fighting a fish. IMO can't beat bamboo.

I would think it would depend on the thickness of the limbs. If they're mostly glass I don't think choice of woods(or grasses) is gonna matter. In thick limbed bows I like light woods such as red cedar because they seem to cast better. Cedars not as strong as bamboo so I get red cedar lams for looks and the fact its not too heavy and bamboo lams for strength. Look at it this way, Hill archery will guaranty bamboo limbs over 100 lbs, but won't wood. Seems theres gotta be a reason for that.

I paid extra for it in my latest set of Wapiti limbs, seems a bit smoother, but of course it's already a smooth design.

'Worth it'? Depends if the money's burning a hole in your pocket or needed elsewhere. (And willie is dead on about the 'boo fly rods. The only comparison I could make would get this topic yanked ;-) )

in my limited experience the design of the bow is the greatest aspect to smoothness and performance. i have a couple of maple core bows (recurve and longbow) that are just as smooth as my bamboo core bows. and i cant tell a difference performance wise.

james is point on.........ask your bowyer. i know two very high end bowyers that told me bamboo doesnt add any performance and only adds a little smoothness of draw. i think most of us could not tell the difference.

If someone asks us to recommend the Limb material I alway's say Bamboo

I love boo in our St. Joe River Bows and in my opinion for what it's worh it is worth the money.

Bamboo does seem more smooth and quick. Also durability reports are good. $40.00 is not that much more in the long run. Resale is probably better too. Just my 2 cents.

Ask the bowyer if he tempers the bamboo. If not then do not waste the money. Then ask them how they temper the bamboo. If it is not brought up to a temp which will bubble out the sugars, do not waste the money. If he sticks one end in the oven at 200 degrees for a few minutes, then the other end,.... ala Fedora, do not waste the money. A piece of properly tempered bamboo bears no resemblance to it's former self. It goes from a stringy piece of grass (which is what it is), to a lighter, stronger material which can be bent double without splintering. There are a couple of bowyers out there that do it right. Ross

I say get the yew lams, unless you have a long draw.. I like and use amberboo myself. Talk it over with the bowyer, he prefers yew over bamboo for a reason.

I like to order bows with bamboo core usually with veneers, but usually can't tell difference between other limb woods like maple or bacote....a reputable bowyer once told me limb design has more impact on performance than material.

The next bow I order will have bamboo limb cores. They do seem to draw smoother. And there is NOTHING that compares to the feeling of a bamboo fly rod! Randy

I would question the idea whether bamboo lams in a glass bow have squat to do with it's f/d curve (ie. "smoothness"). But it may store more energy per mass than other choices so given a design optimized for its use it might make a difference. From what I've read the difference if very subtle, perhaps 2 or 3 fps, notwithstanding a few notable exceptions perhaps, which is in the 1% to 2% range. When I buy lams or commission a glue up, I pick elm for cores and whatever species for veneers offer the color and figure I want. I have a couple of bows with boo under clear as a veneer, which I actually like the looks of. In fact one bow with osage cores and boo veneers, exactly backwards of typical, which actually makes bettern average cast. Design and crafting matter more, imho. What's "worth it" to you is all about how you value things, and money.

Most of my bows have bamboo cores, I think bamboo gives better cast then yew but limb design plays a big part as well. For what you pay for a good custom bow 40 bucks is a drop in the bucket. As for bamboo flyrods I can't find one big enough for salt water.

Blacktails all have bamboo core, I think.

Jerry at Great Northern says limb cores have so little to do with bow performance that "average Joes" would never notice. He says its all in the bow design and craftsmanship. I have no choice but to believe him, I've never built a bow.

BOW DESIGN SEEMS TO BE THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF SMOOTHNESS OF DRAW, I HAVE SHOT A LOT OF BOWS OVER THE YEARS AND IF BOWS ARE OF THE SAME DESIGN THEY SHOOT THE SAME AS FAR AS I CAN TELL.I THINK THE BAMBOO THING IS TRAD SHOOTERS VERSION OF THE NEW GADGET. I CAN'T TELL ANY DIFFERENCE.

I have very limited experience in bow making I have owned numerous bows of all core woods over the last 40 years, though . I just in the last two weeks ordered a custom bow from Leon Stewart I went to his shop convinced I was going to get a bow of Yew core and fancy Maple veneers. After a lengthy discussion of the bows I have had ( smothest draw of any bow I have owned is an all Yew, Wes Wallace) and woods for bow cores , and wanting performance and smoth draw I left after ordering bamboo cores and Yew veneers. I am convinced bamboo is the way to go . I have owned 5 bows in the past with bamboo cores and still have one.

i can tell, you in a widow recurve the all bamboo v models were noticably faster to me but louder!

tomahawk longbows were faster but louder!

All the Bows I have in Bamboo are faster and smoother than the wood ones. May be a little louder.

I have made several bows with red elm cores and made bows with bamboo with the same thickness and from the same form. I like the way the bamboo shoots best and the bamboo is always a little faster.

I have never seen an Olympic recurve from any of the major manufacturers with bamboo cores. They all use hard maple and there must be a reason for it.

Love yew for limbs.

If you get bamboo limbs for an extra $40.00 that is a very good price. All my pronghorns have amberboo limbs which I think draw very smooth..PR

I like working with boo but don,t see much difference in performance over other lams. Rdg

I am under the impression that the wood core species of modern laminated recurves has little to do with performance. The thickness, taper and weight of cores in combination with the glass laminates have a lot to do with the performance.Thus is why foam cores and carbon fiber limbs are such good performing limbs. Fancy grain and exotic woods are of esthetic value only. Now if you are talking an all wood bow or self bow that is a totaly different animal.

i love bamboo. faster? smoother? yes. but not by much. IMO the yew is just as good. MULEY

One thing that is not debatable about bamboo limb cores is that they physically weigh less than most or all other commonly used limb core woods. (not less than foam cores probably, but...)

Since they weigh less, they are lighter to carry. Something I like on a steep climb up a mountain. Every little bit counts. If you're a flat land tree stander, then so what. But if you're an alpine spot and stalker then, very worthwhile.

Also, since the limbs physically weigh less there is less momentum stored in the limbs after the arrow releases from the string, than with heavier limbs. This leads to a smoother, less hand shock, release of the arrow from the string. Nicer to shoot! Remember your high school physics class: Momentum = Mass x Velocity (This is also why we traditionalists like to shoot heavy arrows. The optimum deal is a bow with very light limbs shooting very heavy arrows= maximum momentum of the arrow. Big momentum is what gets results, not big kinetic energy, like the speed freaks would have us to believe.)

The velocity of the arrow is rarely much different than other kinds of limb cores, or at least not by very much, usually only slightly faster. But the physical carrying and shooting characteristics are usually more pleasant.

Bamboo is not always lighter.It also varies more piece to piece than a lot of other woods so hitting weight is more of a problem.By useing action-boo you average the weight part out more so there is less difference in lams.Weight is only part of the thing in bow cores.Light and stiff is good.Light weight but not so stiff is not good.You can easily build a faster bow useing a stiff core even if it does weigh more.If you could use the outside layer of bamboo for lams it would be good stuff.By the time you grind it down to get a a piece flat and wide enough for a recurve limb you have wasted much of the best part.You are left with filler that is not as strong as many other woods.I have heard that the correct tempering helps a lot but have never had any lams tempered that way so can't coment on that.

I can tell you I don't want any bamboo in a recurve limb and do not want any in a limb that uses carbon on the belly.If bamboo was all that in recurve limbs Hoyt and the other leaders would have been using it long ago.I personally wonder how well bamboo will hold up in a streefull design like recurve limbs and carbon r/d bows.On something less streefull like a Hill style bow it is fine but I still have doubts if it is better or as good as other cores. jmho

Bamboo and yew are the two lightest lamination materials, and my pet longbows have one or the other in the core. I find them about equal in performance. So I would say yew for $40 less is a good deal. It might be best to choose whichever is more attractive to your eye in the bow design you are getting. - lbg

not to me, can't see the benefit to me

Red elm core is the ticket. Takes glue better holds up better to F/F strings. The only bamboo I have found that is worth its weight is the Howard Hill bamboo. It is denser and tougher. Howard knew what he was shopping for!

Forty dollars is a deal. I just paid $100 for bamboo limbs.

The kicker is that all these bowyer charge extra for bamboo.. and almost all of them are just using bamboo flooring that anyone can buy at Home Depote or Lowes... Probably cheaper for them to make it out of bamboo then alot of other stuff.. But they charge extra for it???.... That being said I always get bamboo cores on my bows..LOL

I like Bamboo a lot,Bamboo cores with Yew over lays would be my personal choice for a custom built bow.

I know Bamboo performs and I love to look of Yew,,,so it would be the perfect match to me.

I don't know the first thing about it, but I have a boo recurve, and really like the way it shoots.

I just have to point out some flawed logic here though: "If bamboo was all that in recurve limbs Hoyt and the other leaders would have been using it long ago."

Mass produced bows are going to use the most efficient to product materials available that give a reasonably similar performance to other alternatives. . . just a fact of running a business - I suspect synthetic materials are much quicker to produce with consistant results than bamboo, which is what leads to their adoption, not necessarily a significant performance difference.

actionwood should be the most consistant lamination, the laminated bamboo product sold as actionboo should also be very consistant.. I think actionwood has more than 16 lams per inch and actionboo has 4. I have a friend who works for a high end bow manufacture that offers both actionwood and bamboo, he says there is only 3 fps difference in their bows..I have only used edge grain cut red elm and actionboo for tapers.

I can tell the difference in both bows I've bought and bows I've built so I always use it or have the bowyer use it in bows that I buy.

I have a long bow made by Rudderbows,it is hickory and bamboo,a littel finicky with some arrows I shoot,butI found the arrows it likes and it shoots them fast and quite. I love it.57#@29.

terry Sunstone:Forty dollars is a deal. I just paid $100 for bamboo limbs.

Standard with EagleWing Bows. Now thats a deal.

Actionboo and quarter sawn red elm for me. Both make excellent limb cores.

all my bows come standard with bamboo cores. some bowyers charge extra for it and some do not. havent figured that one out yet. i cant see any major cost increase in using it. just my thoughts.

jim gainey black creek bows

no

Bamboo is not as light as folks tend to think it is. Red elm is quite a bit lighter and maple is a bit lighter as well. I have heard that action maple is just soft maple which is a very light maple. I just can't see where a core would make any difference at all in how smooth a bow pulled, one core might be just slightly stiffer than another but they are covered up by fiberglass which is doing about 90% of the work. Steve

If you had several different bows useing different cores built to the same specs by a bowyer and shot them all blindfolded everyone would be able to pick out the bamboo cored bow. Not! :) Many of those that were paying extra for bamboo would be finding,maple,elm or something else in there hand when the lights went on. ;) lol

Bamboo fly rods are not admired for their speed or power but for their softer slower casting stroke and asthetics. what makes this material perform is the tapers built into it and the tempering. The power of the material is in the outer "Hard" portion which is always on the outside of the rod (Kind of like a self bow). There have been some builders of cane rods who have built hollow rods which work well but are very costly due to the labor involved. One builder even built hollow bamboo over a hollow graphite core??? I can't see how this wold do much for a modern laminated recurve lumb on the inside when the work is being done by the back and belly glass. I have always thought the cores simply define a spacing between the glass and if it could be done a hollow box beam construction would work (this is why foam works so well). Could all this speed and smoothness everyone is refering to simply be very well designed limb geometry and craftsmanship?

James Wrenn, I think you are spot on with your last comments.

i dont like extra weight on those steep climbs either. thats why i shoot longbows. MULEY

I've been laying off comment here as these are dangerous waters, but as a former bamboo rod builder, I see a few posts here worth adding to. Also I am NOT a bowyer, but AM taking on bow repair work, and learning a lot very quickly.

Is Bamboo worth it is like asking blonde or brunette. It depends on the girl. Rod quality bamboo comes from only one province in China. It is a grass and not a wood, and it's flexibility to grow 40ft. tall or more AND bend in the wind is attributable to two factors. One are long "power" fibers that grow just under the skin, or "rind" and are cushioned by a soft pith in a similar manner that longitudinal glass or carbon fibers are cushioned by the epoxy resin used in a bow limb. The other is how these fibers hook and hinge at the bamboo stalk's growth rings (called nodes).

The first possible problem I see is that a bamboo stalk (culm) is round and a bow limb is flat. At 3-4" in diameter, a spline split from a culm that is wide enough for a bow limb must be flattened out. The process must require some sort of press and heat, and inevitably spreads the bamboo power fibers further away from their natural position. To solve this, the boo limb core could be made from narrower longitudinal strips laid side by side.

Problem two is the node itself. This is a break in the power fiber structure, and is a weak spot in a bamboo rod. Rod makers solve this by staggering the node positions in the typical six strips that make the hex shaped rod so that no two nodes are side by side, creating a potential weak spot.

On the boo bows I've examined, the nodes extend the width of the limb, and there is no getting around that this creates a potential weak spot. Perhaps not enough to matter, but I'd be willing to bet that if a bamboo limb breaks, it will be at a node.

Problem three, as mentioned by others is that raw bamboo must be baked to drive off moisture which stiffens the bamboo adding great tensile strength. Improperly or inadequately done, and the bamboo is too willowy to serve as a stand alone limb material. It is also hygroscopic and must be well sealed to keep it from absorbing humidity again. (This may be where the old phrase "gone soft" came from when a bamboo rod bends and stays bent rather that flexing back to its original position.)

In sum, bamboo CAN make a great bow limb if built by someone who understands its characteristics. But the added steps and associated cost to cut, bake and press bamboo into a form of maximum utility makes me as suspicious as other posters as to its true "better-faster" reputation in bow construction.

I like bamboo but there is no reason that is should cost more than any other core. Whippensticks come with bamboo as a base option for cores without any extra charge.

Bow X comes with x option included at 550.

Bow y comes with x option as 100 dollar upgrade but is only 500. base price.

Which bow is the best buy if everything else is equal including performance?

Its amazing how many people would say bow y is cheaper and pay 100 for the upgrade. I see it all the time.

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