Chad,
I have never tried a double taper if I understand what you mean. This would create a flat spot in the middle portion of the limb. Your fadeout area above the riser would take all the pressure. My longbows are a slight r/d (2" and 1&quotand I don't like to use a lot of taper. I personally like .002"-.004" total taper in mine. I tried a reverse taper in one bow. What a nightmare! I like a full working limb. Too much emphasis on working the fadeout area causes too many problems. It did make a very fast bow though.
Any other opinions?
Dick

D4B,

Marc uses a double taper lam on his one piece Chek-Mate Crusader longbow. It is around .125" in the riser area, narrows down to about .030 mid limb and then back out to about .060 at the tips. It is one smooth drawing, sweet shooting bow. And it packs some punch.

I've described the center actionwood lam on my 62", 51#@28" Crusader. It also has two normally tapered yew lams, one either side of the double tapered lam.

Bill

Praise the Lord, He is worthy

Edited by - lamb1647 on 12/22/2002 15:48:59

Bill,
I was thinking about the lams being barrel tapered. DUH! Now that makes more sense. That would place more flex in the fadeouts. The tips would recover more slowly but I would think it would make more noise in a R/D design. Just a guess. I've never tried to build a bow like that. Dick