birch bow

[youngbowyer]

Hi,

Some of you may know me from the englishwarbow section but i decided to try my hand at making a birch bow. The stave was around 3 inches in diameter and i already roughed it out. it is almost ready for tillering but i was wondering if i need to heat treat the belly and how a linen backing would work on this bow. Ill post some pictures of the bow tomorrow.

Thanks, Tom.

[Pat B]

Tom, if you peeled the bark off to expose the bows back there is no need for a backing. If you just want to add a linen backing it won't hurt anything and will give you a bit of protection. Heat treating on the other hand should give the birch better compression strength. Get your stave bending well to brace height at least before heat treating.

[youngbowyer]

Thanks!

[amberb_57]

I tried building a bow from a birch slab, following a ring along the outer edge of the slab.  I put a rawhide backing on it that may have been too thick.  I ran into a problem of compression failure cracks on the belly of the bow and it lost it's ability to return to straight when unstrung.  The string follow stayed the way it was with the string on it, after I took the string off.  I don't know why that happened, but I'm guessing that birch might not be as good under compression as some other woods.
  I hope you have better luck with your bow!

Amber