All Bamboo Hill Style

[simk]

This is my take at the fancy all bamboo Hill-Style bow.
Not yet sure what to think about the all bamboo thing. Somehow feels and shoots like a very soft yew.
Got massivly underweight also - thought 16.5mm would easy make that ordered 60# bow - I was wrong and only got 40#.
Will start over with 19mm and do more intense heat treating.

cheers

[simk]

the limbs are made of 5 layers of boo while the grip is black locust.

[Pat B]

All bamboo makes a nice looking bow. Maybe your next try will meet your intentions. 

[willie]

This is my take at the fancy all bamboo Hill-Style bow.
Not yet sure what to think about the all bamboo thing. Somehow feels and shoots like a very soft yew.
Got massivly underweight also - thought 16.5mm would easy make that ordered 60# bow - I was wrong and only got 40#.
Will start over with 19mm and do more intense heat treating.

cheers

nice work as always, simk

what part of the culm is on the belly side of the belly lam?

for all who might be interested in bamboo:
https://sunsethilllongbowsandleather.blogspot.com/2023/09/getting-into-basic-hill-style-longbow.html

[Hamish]

Did you use commercially available boo lamelles for your core laminates? If you did this may be why your bow was under weight. Like Willie's article mentions it can be unevenly distributed power fibres.

For best chance of success I would heat temper the core and belly slats, glue up with a slight reflex.

If you go to a lot of trouble you can split, and glue up narrow sections with high content power fibres into a belly slat. Its a lot of work.

For the commercial boo slats my results were exactly the same as your description, like soft yew. Very pleasant to shoot, light in the hand, but took more set than I expected(I only made unreflexed bows at the time, so a little reflex would have been a good idea.

[Threy Cameron]

Well done man! That's a nice looking bow even coming in under what you wanted. I suppose you would pre-tiller the bamboo before gluing like a deflex recurve? I've tried some of them with the native wood we have here in NZ with mixed results haha.

What glue did you use to laminate the limbs if you don't mind me asking? I've tried smooth on ea-40 and titebond 3 myself.

[simk]

thanks guys!

willie, the 16 was my initial thickness at the fades (10" from center), tapering to around 11mm on the outers. Width is around 28mm widest, tapering to 10mm on the tips.

i did grind down my lams from bamboo slats Hamish....finally a good way to get use of the b-grade ones....
i did temper everything beyond the neutral zone and glued the belly lams flipped - power fibres on the outer...and I only slightly decrowned the belly slat to make glueup easier fore me - but this really needs  to be  minimized.
as you suggest, I think I will split and reglue the belly slat for the next one. that is a smart idea that i had been carrying around already...

Threy, I do glueup everything at once - and you do not need to pretiller anything as long you are in control of your tapers. I used white pva carpenters glue - that works fine except of the fact, trhat you cannot have gaps and you have to hurry up....once pressure is on you cannoct correct anymore.  I did not remove material from the belly for tillering....that is forbidden. I only tillered from the sides, by rounding the edges on the belly. that is the difficulty to manage with these bows.

doing some tempering experiments now before making the next one.... the bamboo is getting very hard by tempering, you wouldnt believe....these smaples immediately destroyed my fine japan saw....!!!!!!!!!!!!