decorative laminations?

[Jacob Deitz]

#3848

I am building a 66 inch recurve, maple core. Using Binghams template. I would like to add some decorative veneers of zebra wood under clear glass. I have ground them down to 1mm. Do I need to go thinner to avoid affecting draw weight?

Any thoughts/ past experience would be much appreciated.

[Gregg Coffey]

#24627

1 mm is fine for thickness of the zebrawood “veneers”, but I always include the thickness of all the laminations in my calculations. If you built a recurve w/o veneers which turned out good, and then add veneers without accounting for the extra thickness, you’ll have a bow for Hercules, and will need to start over.

Also, zebrawood is pretty porous, and will soak up the epoxy before curing and leave you with very small glue voids that show up under the clear glass. Use plenty of epoxy and heat and apply pressure slowly. This is mostly a cosmetic issue, but annoying.

I’ll check back tomorrow and see if you have more questions.

Gregg

[Jacob Deitz]

#25312

Thanks,

I will re-adjust my core laminations. I thought this was the case, but couldn’t find any support material to back it up.

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