school me on tapers and parallels

[LWArchery]

I am looking at building me a laminated reflex/deflex 64" long bow. I have not found any pictures on builds explaining the taper laminates.

[LWArchery]

What is the purpose? Flexion for tillering?

[chackworth3]

Tapers help a r/d bow bend and perform how it is supposed to. Tapers are used to push the working portion of the limbs out from the riser fades. The more taper you have the farther out from the fades the working portion of the limb will be. The taper rate is all dependent on your limb design. If you don't use enough taper you will most likely have a "hinge" in your limb close to the fades. If you use too much, you won't have very much working limb and the bow will stack up sooner. Another thing with tapers is it takes material out of the tips making them lighter which helps reduce noise and hand shock and transfers more energy to the arrow where as a bow with all parallels is going to have more material in the tips causing more noise and hand shock which will result in a slower arrow and a slower bow. There might be some argument here from other guys but this has been my experience. Hope this makes sense

[LeanMachine]

My first build I used tapers. No real complaints. However, it did not shoot as smooth or draw as smooth as my bob lee (no surprise there). As best as I can tell, bob lee builds his limbs parallel. I have two sets and can find no change in thickness with micrometer. The bow I am working on now is an absolute copy of a bob lee. I build a new form to match and I used parallels. I'm anxious to see the difference.

[LWArchery]

Thanks for the info.

[bob sarrels]

Chasksworth pretty much explained it. We use tapers in about 60 % of our models. Some work better with, some without. Always a bit more important on shorter bows. Keeps the hinge fade to a minimum. We only build one model with 2 tapered core lams. We taper our lams here in hourse . We use .002 per running inch. Works best for us.