Do anyone have experience with bending and tempering bamboo?

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I've made a few bows, steambent a few limbs, but never bamboo. I think that when you use heat to bend wood you're softening up the material between the fibers, allowing the fibers to slide ever so slightly and set in their new place. Or something.
You can use dry heat, steam or straightup boil the wood. Dry heat is riskier as it dehydrates the wood extremely quickly but I have used it to correct minor misalignments after the fact to great effect.

If you are making a recurve it might be enough with a deep pot of boiling water. Since recurves only have a short area heavily bent whereas a reflex-deflex bow has reflex through the entire limb (and deflex through the riser).
Reflex/recurve means being bent "away from the shooter" while deflex means the opposite.

In my pic you can see my first attempt at a reflex-deflex bow. I did that with a large pipe hooked up to a pot of boiling water, left it to steam for 45-60 minutes while checking on it occasionally then quickly, using gloves, clamping it to a mould made of extremely thick (like 3 inches) plywood but you could make a mould out of a 2x6 just as well. My particular bow is rawhide-backed juniper.

If it's your first bow I am not sure I would recommend making a takedown. Some recommend it because "if something breaks not all work is wasted" but it adds a whole new dimension of alignment and attachment problems between riser and limbs. I've never heard of anyone making a bow out of only bamboo, though it is fairly popular to back bows using it, because of its impressive tensile strength. Backing means gluing onto the back (the side facing away from the shooter). I've also heard bamboo takes a lot of set or "string-follow" so you may want to shape the bow to have excess reflex from the getgo. You're also gonna wanna flatten the natural curve out of the bamboo by steaming/heating and pressing it flat.

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With all these things in mind I'd argue that you should make a bamboo backed bow but not by steambending the reflex/recurve in but rather, by gluing it in.

Start by hewing out the basic shape of the bow in a straight stave of a wood that can withstand compression well (ipe, juniper, ash, mesquite, yew). Flatten your bamboo with heat and force. I think you'll want to retain the natural outer layer of the bamboo for maximum integrity so thin down the bamboo with a beltsander or something, from the "inside". I guess roughly 3mm is a good thickness for a bamboo backing. Create a good gluable surface on both bow and bamboo. Rasp is good. I've heard people work over the bulgy bits on the bamboo with round steel rods or similar to kinda compress/temper them without ruining their structural integrity.

While glue cures, pressure can be applied by tightly wrapping string around the whole thing but that string will likely fuse with the bow because of squeezeout and that's a pain to remove. If you use this method you can tie the nocks together to achieve a reflexed shape during glue-up and curing.

Alternatively, and probably better as it's easier and will assure perfect uniformity in both limbs, is gluing it up in a mould with reflex built-in. Put plastic bags between bow and mould to avoid them fusing.
Glue I'd recommend is Titebond 3.

After that you just rasp away until you can start floor-tillering it (look it up). Shape riser, cut nocks, make a string, make a tillering stick, tiller, sand, seal.
All that work will be wasted if you use a shoelace or some nylon shit for a string. Use quality linen thread or Dacron B50 and learn to make a flemish twist.
Making good arrows is a science in itself with spine, weight, wood grain orientation and type/size/orientation of fletchings.

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All wood needs time to dry thoroughly before being worked however. Green (wet) wood takes additional set which will affect bow performance. Drying takes ages, they say a year per inch of thickness.

If you're getting yourself into this to hunt I think you should make a good bow with a draw weight of atleast 35 lbs for reasons of humaneness.

Good reading for aspiring bowyers.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/26sdzs1ql4viylc/The+Traditional+Bowyer%27s+Bible%2C+Vol.+1.pdf
http://www.mediafire.com/file/hzh6mb4c1ciykte/The+Traditional+Bowyer%27s+Bible%2C+Vol.+2.pdf

Cozy watching for aspiring bowyers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt0n9W8KHS0

>>1069025
do you have links for the other two bowyers bibles

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Na man sorry.

>>1071451
what type of line used?

>>1068958
I suppose you could call it... a weeabow.

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>>1071485

I make all of my strings out of around 12 to 16 strands of waxed linen thread which adds up to a string some 4-5mm in diameter. I don't know its thickness as it wasn't specified in the store.
It's probably inferior to Dacron B50 but it feels more genuine to use linen. I sourced the linen from a swedish online retailer called Pärlförrådet but they don't seem to carry linen thread any longer. It used to be available in so many colors, I bought spools of white, red, yellow, olive green, brown, gray, black so I'm set for life thankfully.

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>>1071485

Oh and the serving is just some cotton thread called björntråd here ("bear thread") which is known for its strength. I wrap it on right off the spool when bow and string are done and put together in their final configuration. Serving is there to protect the bowstring.

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Last pic there is also a good example of green (meaning wet, uncured) wood (this is yew) with no reflex taking lots of set and making for a not so professional looking final product which probably also has inferior shooting properties.

Another thing to warn you about is using oil on rawhide. Don't, it just turns fuzzy and ugly. Paint or varnish if you're gonna seal it, which is definitely recommended.

>>1069024

Will titebond 2 work? I mean I'm lazy as fuck and going off the msds the difference in strength is around 8%.

>>1071497
>I suppose you could call it... a weeabow.
WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWW! you sure shot a bullseye with that one, Carlos...

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>>1071718
Almost certainly, yes. Pretty sure even PVA (Elmer's) or polyurethane (gorilla) glue could work. Epoxy might not be flexible enough for limbs. It's great for stiff parts however. I use a transparent marine-rated epoxy glue for risers and nock reinforcements
Most modern bowmakers seem to use Titebond for most applications and TB3 is the best as far as I understand.

Traditionally they'd boil down rawhide or bones for hours to make glue. I've heard fishbones make a water-resistant glue. Animal glues set really hard but moisture+heat will soften them up again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_glue

Pic is my latest project fresh out of its cocoon. When applying rawhide backings I coat both the limb and the flesh-side of the rawhide with TB3 and tightly wrap the limb with elastic gauze, squeezing out excess glue and potential airbubbles as I go along. I let it cure for a week atleast before I start messing with it. I wish I had bent more reflex into this particular bow however.

>>1072148

I have osage on my property and hickory, and I want to make a 3 lam bow (not for my first, but as an end goal). So far I have an idea which is essentially a 1" wide bow, 60" long, 12" handle including fades, with 8" static limbs on each side, heavily recurved, is there anything wrong with this design as a whole? For the laminations I was thinking hickory for the back at 1/8th inch, cherry for the core at 1/4th, and osage as the belly at 1/4th.

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>>1072179
I'm by no means an expert but it sounds good from what I know. Sounds like good choices of wood. I'm jealous of United Statesians' access to Osage, Hickory and Black Locust. I know Osage is supposed to take little or no set at all while Hickory takes a lot of set. Are you planning on putting a fiberglass backing on it? The transparent kind you can buy at some archery supply stores I mean. I'd guess even the notoriously tensile-strong hickory could lift a splinter if your lamination is cut through the growth rings, do you know anything about that?

I have no idea about lam thickness. Never made a proper laminate bow but if I had a thickness sander or planer I sure would. For now I make my portable beltsander non-portable by putting it in the workbench vice upside down.
I'm playing around with the idea of making a pretty short mongolian horsebow-inspired 2-lam bow with proper "siyahs" kinda like pic related.

Maybe a Perry reflex would be of benefit to you. I've no idea how good it is or anything, have just heard about it.
http://leatherwall.bowsite.com/TF/lw/thread2.cfm?forum=23&threadid=188683&category=

You guys talking about Osage Orange like it's just another wood... Have you ever worked any? It'll throw sparks if you use a chainsaw to cut it. I'm sure it makes a great bow, but if you're working it and not cussing the whole time then you're a better man than I am, and my hat's off to you. Seriously.

>>1072279

>>1072267

I'll look up some more info and post on forums and stuff, thanks. I wasn't planning on using glass as I wanted it to be more natural.

>>1072279

>You guys talking about Osage Orange like it's just another wood... Have you ever worked any?

nah man, I've worked with it and carved it's insane, your hands are fucked after you try to carve that stuff.

>It'll throw sparks if you use a chainsaw to cut it.

yeah I cut down all but the last one with an axe and saw and this time I used a chainsaw and was freaked the fuck out by that.

wood is not supposed to do that to steel chain, what ran through my mind when I saw that was "what insanity is this."

>I'm sure it makes a great bow, but if you're working it and not cussing the whole time then you're a better man than I am, and my hat's off to you. Seriously.

I've made arrows and handles out of it, it's not that hard to shape with the grain as it tears out easily, which is a good and bad thing.