Primitive Archer

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Yes you can safely cut close to center . You need 1-1/2” thick handle section. And look at some glass long bow handles it’s no different except the back of the handle is flat .  A Howard hill style handle works. They are more arrow forgiving. Also opens up your sight window. One reason the target shooters like them.

Arvin - do you typically cut your arrow shelves into your self bows that deep?
I was always lead to believe you should take just a minimal bite out of the riser then build the shelf out further with leather, wood, cork...etc.
I'd just as soon do it your way, but always thought it would be a broken bow waiting to happen.

I think a common issue with the R/d design versus a recurve is that they’re much harder to tiller. I assume this results in less even strain and a slower bow. Recurves are simple in comparison which may explain the difference by wood bow makers on average. I think it’s also easier to get more total reflex from a recurve than with a r/d bow. Seems like Fiberglass bows that can be designed so close to perfect are closer to what we’d see in a model versus real world averages.

Wooden laminates are easy. I make a R/D model with VirtualBow, find a correct taper rate for specific front profile. Then I make the laminates (3–4, each tapering 0.000, 0.002 or 0.004), after gluing I shape the front profile and after rounding the corners the tiller is usually very close to "perfect". For example, that 98# bamboo-horn-laminate, I made two tillering rounds, maybe 15 minutes total. Thats it.

to not confuse the thread we might stay a bit closer to the topic. The simple ( ) question actually seems: How and why does the sideprofile affect energy storage? 

Although I said that string angle isn't the best parameter to describe energy storage, it is still quite good to tell something about energy storage... Here is braced and drawn profiles of three of those models, and draw-force curves with straight reference line.

All finished up. 🤠