I am a woodworker and an archer and wish to make a long bow. I have a quantity of Yew wood but cannot get enough clear wood out of it without laminating. I am cutting laminates 3ft6in long by 2" by 1/4" Then thicknessing them down to 3/16th. I will glue these lamination together to make two 42x2x11/2 staves. These I will join together with a finger joint and another lamination for strength. Question is What glue do I use? I have been told Cascamite but am unsure.
I've never used Yew wood, but unless it is particularly oily, I'd use Franklin Titebond II or Titebond III. If the wood is oily enough that adhesion may be a problem with water based glues, I'd use a polyurethane glue such as Gorilla Glue or Elmer's Pro-Bond.
DonkeyHody "All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
I'd suggest asking in an archery forum. Most of the advice you will get here is from the perspective of folks that build wooden things like boxes, cabinets, furniture that does not experience much flexing of the wood. An answer that would make a strong table or chair may break up or fatigue under the flexing of a bow.
Wooden airplanes experience flexing, and are generally glued with epoxies. But I don't know if that is because of flexibility or other factors.
Check with a couple of manufacturers who carry a wide range of glue types.
You can't make a longbow by laminating. You can make a "long bow" that way, but not a true longbow (cut on the boundary between yew heartwood and sapwood)
I'd suggest you find some green riven ash (not sawn) and make some bows from that. When you've a bit of experience with that, try yew. Ash is cheap, easy and plentiful, yew isn't. Most yew bows just aren't much good - unless you really know what you're doing with it, it's hard to get anything moderately useful from it.
If you have to laminate, then (almost) anything will do it. Technique is more important than glue material. Hide works, although there are traditional additives to make it more flexible and rabbit skin is probably better. PVA (inc Titebond) works too. About the only glue that doesn't work is PU. You need to bind the lams _very_ tightly when the glue is curing - either vac bag them, or bind tightly with wrapped string and tight knots.
Epoxy is used and appears popular, but that's mainly with people who are making crazy drawweight compound bows.
The issue with airplanes isn't really flexibility. If there is *that* much flexing in an airplane, you've got a real problem. The two issues we face in building wood airplanes (on top of overall strength, creep, etc) are resistance to long term exposure to moisture and resistance to failure/weakening due to heat. Epoxy doesn't have any problems with moisture, but you'll notice that many wooden (and composite) aircraft are painted white to minimize heat gain in sunlight.
Some glues that are widely used in aviation in the US are resourcinol, weldwood, and epoxy, with T-88 epoxy being a favorite. Some people are using the polyurethane glues, but the aviation community is slow to adopt new ideas.
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