I have two board bows I'm working on. Both were shaped out of roughly 1x3x3/4 pieces of Hickory. I've heard from some different people that Hickory shouldn't need a backing however I wanted to post some pics and double check that before I put these bows on the tillering tree. The first is the pyramid design I posted about earlier.
This is the right limb:
Left limb:
And tips:
The tips are both the same size, I just took the pics at different distances. Also the color make look funny but that's because I tweaked the brightness and contrast to bring out the grain. The boards are typical creamy whitish Hickory color. As you can see the pyramid bow is from a piece that had a pretty good decrowned grain pattern visible on both ends.
This second bow is a Meare Heath replica I knocked out on a whim. The board this bow is shaped from is not as good as the pyramid design bow. The Meare Heath board had a propeller twist to it and you can tell from the end grain that one end shows a decrowned grain pattern while the other end is bias ringed, which I guess caused the twist. I don't know if this is going to be a problem or not. I attempted to take some of the twist out by planing the future back of the bow to knock down the edge that was twisting up the most. I then went ahead and shaved the belly down.
Left limb:
Right limb:
Decrowned end:
Bias ringed end:
So, what do you guys think? Should these bows need to be backed? Up to now, the only bows I've made have been board bows from Red Oak and those I backed even though they had decent decrowned ring pattern or were slightly bias ringed. I'd rather be safe than sorry, especially given the sheer amount of time it took to shave these two boards down to size, but if they don't need to be backed I won't back them. By the way, my first choice for backing would be linen - I have plenty of it around and it's easy to apply.
