WENGE wood Spliced selfbow & red oak Pyramid board bow tillering

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Has anyone made a bow from WENGE? I have 2 pieces of it that's 40.5" long X 2" wide X 1 7/8" thick. I was thinking doing a finger splice or maybe a Z splice at the handle. for the lay out how does this sound...

Pyramid style bow 66" N2N Looking for hunting weight around 50-55# @ 23.5/24" draw

Or would 68" N2N 1.5"fade to mid-limb taper to .5" at tips...again looking for 50-55# @ 23.5/24" draw

both with a slightly stiff bend in the handle, or is there a better lay out you would do with it...again looking for 50-55#

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I guess this is a bad wood for bows? Maybe I can rip them down and do a lamination bow.

[Osagetree]

Salvatore, I have never seen it in a selfbow.

[kennym]

The lams I've ground from it seem to be dry and kinda open grained,let us know!!!

[Frank]

I've seen a wenge board bow.  I tried to make one years ago.  I did not have a bandsaw and boy the wood was hard.  

Frank

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I used the wrong term.. I should have said Self board bow..

Later today or tomorrow I'm going to try and do one....I'm going to try doing a Pyramid style bow 66" N2N Looking for hunting weight around 50-55# @ 23.5/24" draw. I'll be posting pic's on this one... I'll take pic's of the boards. I do have to square it up on the ends better so I can lay it out & draw the splice areas.

KennyM, I think this is the one I'll be using the Osage handle on. I think the colors will look really nice together..

Osage, You don't have to call me Salvatore, Sal will be fine....

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Ok, here is some pic's of the boards. I ask Tim Baker if a Pyramid style bow would work with this type of wood. Will I'll be doing a build a long. I'll be trying/starting out with a 2.5" wide at fades to .5" at tips with 4"(L) X 1.5"(W) X 1.75"(T)  handle area, for the length I'll start about 66".  
The ends to be joined
   
   
The backs of both boards together..
   
the backs & the side of one of the boards.
   
   
As You can see the grain runs nice. I was told as long as they run straight no need for backing. I do have some camo cotton backing that I can use if needed.

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I almost forgot.... I'll be adding in some Yellow wood in the handle area. I'm getting a 3/4"x2"x12" piece of Osage from KennyM.

Question to other Bowyers... can I add reflex to the glue up & fill in with the osage in a overlay & to the belly side of the handle?

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I glued on the cut-out pattern for the splice & draw out the bow on the boards. My work shop in the great outdoors, little chilly & damp outside right now to cut out the bow & splice... Later I'll take pic's as I do the cutting.

I'll also rip down the to 1" thick on both limbs. This will give me enuff to do 2 bows.  I'll first cut the splice then the rip. this way I don't have do so much cutting.(More L8R)

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Originally posted by mysticguido:
 Question to other Bowyers... can I add reflex to the glue up & fill in with the osage in a overlay & to the belly side of the handle?

Changed my mind... I won't be doing that, but I will steam the tips for a slight recurve. I'm think 1 to 2" should be enuff.

I never steamed wood before so when the bow is ruffed out to belly side of tips .5" would that be the best time to stream/bend the tips?

[horseapple]

I would recommend not putting any reflex or recurved tips on this type of bow, the wood is very hard and brittle and most have been kiln dried so try and make a straight limbed bow and hope for a slight set in the limbs, that would seem to be the safest for this wood.  I would actually back the wood with bamboo or hickory and cross my fingers, also I've only used wenge for center lams.

JD

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here is my Bow shops cutting table with a 12" Table top bandsaw.


Ripping the bow down to 13/16" to make 2 bows.


Here is the handle area that I cut out & glued up. As You can see I have a paste of TB III & Wenge saw dust mixed. This is to fill in  on some small gaps & extra support. I will be adding a handle overlay to it later.I don't know if it will be Ipe or Osage.
Also You can see I have the handle area ruffed out with fades cut.

[Terry Green]

Where did you get those Wenge 'boards'?

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From a friend just up the road from me... He does wood work and had them laying around. I went up there to get a red oak board from him. As we where talking about the bow and how I was going to do it. I asked if he could get any Ipe, Well he gave me the boards. I still have another set waiting to be glued up. I'll be doing that this weekend.

I got the bow bug bad... I have a red oak that's on the long string being tillered, now this Wenge bow with another in the wings...

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Side Note: As I was working on this bow I had my Ipod playing some ZZ Top & Mozart, with some Led Zeppelin.

[JEFF B]

way to go.nice looking wood.  

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Thanx, I was cleaning up the wood I cut off and grabbed 2 nice pieces I'm using for overlays on a Red Oak board bow. I have one curing now, I'll add the other one tomorrow. After they cure I'll sand them down some, then wrap them with some art-sinew to help hold them on as I tiller. I'm doing them like a wedge nock. I'll post pic's of them tomorrow as well.

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Well this morning I added a small piece of red oak for a overlay. I'm waiting on Osage for finish all the gluing.



Here is a pic of the Red oak Pyramid bow that has Wenge overlay tips. These overlays will be wrapped with Sinew when tillering is done. I'll temp-tie them on for extra holding power as I tiller.

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Since I'm still waiting on the Osage wood I didn't work on the wenge bow.

Well I woke up and started to tiller the red oak. Here is some pic's.

The first pic is of my Bow Shop & some tools.

1) bathroom/bow scale
2) Ferrer's rasp
3) mill bastard file ( for scrapers )
4) tillering tree
5) long string
6) tape measurer
7) small hand planner
8) Draw knife
9) bend marker ( small block of wood w/screw )
10) Rudder scraper ( for weight removal )
11) 2, clamps
12) cabinet scrapers


here is the bow on tree.... It's at 47#@15"...brace is only 2" from handle...making it 47#@13".... the right limb is the bottom limb for now... The top limb is about 1" longer & 1/8" positive tiller.



(Note) background You can see my cutting glass table, my Hot smoker under the tarp. A Freind came over so I stop for now...

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Heres the same pic but w/line to see the tillering and that it is at 6-6.5" brace... I did do some scraping so it is at 50# in these pic..... Still around 2" brace when off the tree/tillering board.