Raw boo back and belly?

Or BOOFLOOR belly?

If the latter, I've come in at high to mid 40's with a 64" bow, 1 3/8-1 1/2" wide, at least 1/2 thick off the fades and 7/16 wide + by 3/8 deep at the tips. this is with about a 10 to 12" rise/handle.

ive been thinking of making a all boo bow too, with a twist though. ive been thinking of adding a veneer (spelling?) of walnut between the raw boo backing and boo floor belly. maybe add some layers at the handle for a "power" lam. i also remember reading somewhere on this site about a boo bow with a third lam of ipé rising up the fades, so i thought that would be cool to do. does anyone have any experience with this, and maybe some pics of it?

bump

Ya'll are describing the basic wood and bamboo composite tri-lam.

Norseman was the guru for a while, but there is no real trick to it. Boo back, middle lam of boofloo or wood, belly of boofloo. I've done almost nothing but, and there are a few other guys, too, like badger who used to do this.

Middle lam of ipe, osage, hickory, goncaloalves, maple, oak, and locust all worked nicely for me.

Only done a bit with the whole power lam thing. I have run a thin lam right up the belly. Just make sure you feather it out long and thin....

Search for bamboo with the searcher, and look up old pics, you'll find plenty, but I like making these. They shoot nicely and the boofloo belly makes them hard to screw up.

i am also a enthusiast on all Boo bow(raw back & raw belly) yes, i do agree that Norseman is the guru to the boo bows and have been very helful in contribution thi forum. Sad that he is no long active in this forum and busy with his own life.

http://s43.photobucket.com/albums/e356/robt188/Boo%20bow%20back%20and%20belly/

above are pics of some of the boo bows that I have built raw boo back & Belly, 62 NTN, 54lbs at 25" ................enjoy

i was looking for info on a tri-lam. what i meant was raw boo on back, MIDDLE lam of boo floor and BELLY lam of ipé going up the fades of the handle (like you do on glass bows) thats what i wanted to se pics of :) im just worried that the ipé is too hard/brittle to be any good for going up the fades, or id have to make it too thin to be able to tiller it afterwards. any ideas?

Yer problem there will be that ipe is so stiff that it will have to be pretty thin to bend into a fadeout, and this may not leave you enough to cut into/remove when you tiller.

I put the wood in the middle and the boofloo on the belly because that was what Norseman does. I have made wood bellies, and there is nothing at all wrong with them. They may even offer better performance.

Bamboo flooring bellies seem to make marginal wood like cherry, oak, and ash less likely to fret. That has been my experience. Ipe is awesomely hard and is as good as almost anything on a belly, though. You are just going to need to figure ways around its stiffness.

Do you have a way to taper lams? If so, I have been thinking of doing this, but haven't yet. Taper your middle lam/core so the tips are the thinnest and it gets thicker toward the middle. Make your ipe thickest at the tips and thinner at the fades. This gives you lots of the best material (ipe) out along the limb where you are doing the most bending, and the most tillering.

It might give you heavy tips, but honestly, if the taper isn't really severe, you will probably end up with that belly lam nearly parallel anyway, after you shape and tiller.

Good luck.

RT. Share more about boo bellies. There have been lots of ?????? lately, and I am interested, too.

I am planning to make a boo backed boo soon with moso or tonkin backing and Tam Vong belly, and I could use some guidance.

springbuck. i dont have a way of tapering easy, i use a power grinder and a handheld plane to do it, but that means using my eyesight for evenness, it has worked till now. but when you make a tri lam, the middle lam has to be very precise (ive found out) I have made a tri lam like you suggested, raw boo backing, ipé middle and boo floor riding up the fades, but id like to do it the other way round. my idea was this: make the backing nice and thin so its tillered pretty even, make the middle (boo floor) tappered and tiller it with the riser section on it, and then make the ipe lams parallel and pretty thin. that should (in theory at least) mean that i would only have to remove material from the sides of the bow once its glued up. my question is how thin id need to make the ipé, or rather how thick can i make it and still have it ride up the fades? would be nice to have a too powerfull bow that i can just trim down. thanx for any input.

Hi spring Buck, I started building bamboo bow thru the Guidance of JavaMan Archery Gregg in 1999. He now builts bows for Ron Laclair now. Google it and u will find it.

I aslo had inputs from a German guy Name Stephen S........ from the Primitive archery web site, so there to do a search in the archieve for bamboo bo and u will see it.

Subsequently I met Norseman on the Leatherwall in 2005 and he has helped me very much along the way.

My 2 pcs of boo that i used to built the boo bow are pre tappered b 4 glue up. minimum Tillering is done on the back of the bow, YES ON THE BACK, Norseman may disagree with me but according to the German guy, he does all his tiller on the back. Removing little materials does not affect the "power Fibres" but if you remove a lot , now thats a different ball game.

Hope this little bit of info is help ful for you, but if if need additional more info, do PM me, cheers

Rt, if you are doing anything to violate the fibers on the back of a bamboo bow you are destroying the bow, regardless of what the german guy tells you. I have made bamboo bows in the hundreds and know they can fail. I haven't used many boo bellies so won't comment on them, I will say I am not crazy about boo bellies with boo backs.