one thing my grandpa used was the materials found in the compression clothes that you see athletes using all the time. they're amazing for this kind of work as well as sinew.
Excellent as always. I'm gonna try backing a bow for the first time and I've got a question. Can I use tanned leather as a replacement for the rawhide? Getting rawhide or sinew in my contry is quite hard since hunting is very restricted. The piece I had in mind would be about 0.5 mm thick (just over 1/64"), chrom-vegetable tanned, natural color. Second option I consider is to try flax but TBB does not go into specifics on how to apply that backing.
Unfortunately backing with leather isn't the same as rawhide. It wont provide any tension strength or much protection and will add a lot of mass to the limbs. It just stretches too much. Are there farm animals like goats that you could get rawhide from? Cow sinew works well too. Flax would work well and give similar protection as rawhide. I don't have personal experience applying it but I would think that the fibers would be laid out to form a matrix on the back and glued down similar to sinew.
I think it would be possible for me to get some cow sinew, not so sure about cow rawhide. Thanks for the suggestion. In any case, I shall try backing with flax first. If it would be similar to backing with sinew I can visualize the whole process with two exceptions. Should I wrap the limbs after laying the matrix, like it's done with sinew? How do I seal that bow? BLO, beeswax, tung oil not gonna cut it. So some spray lacquer/varnish thing?
I did on this one. You can do it earlier in the process if you need the added confidence of the rawhide in the tillering process just remember that you can't do any heat corrections once you've added the rawhide.
Thanks for the video. It helps a lot. My question is, can I get some poundage to bow, with a rawhide backing? I've made my first bow from locust and made a mistake. So I lost a lot of poundage. I really like the bow tho, but isn't fun to shoot. What do you think? Is it worth a try? I don't want to shorten the bow, because the risk of breaking. thanks
