How to Explode a Bow, ...or... My horrible erc attempt

[toomanyknots]

Well I have no excuses with this one,  . Sometime recently between doing this and that, I decided to try my hand at an erc longbow without a wooden backing, from a board, with pretty crappy grain, and some knots, with one huge knot right in the middle of the board. Don't ask me why, but this is what I ended up doing,  . I will be silk backing the bow, as that is about my only choice at the moment. The way I decided to get around the big knot in the center is to add another piece of board to make a solid non-working handle. The grain is nice and horrible. Here's some pictures to document my shame:

Here's the bottom limb:



Heres the upper limb, it has a bit of sapwood in it and no knots. The bottom limb is all heartwood, and has 3 knots:





Here's some of that horrible grain:





Knot in the middle:





The 3 knots in the bottom limb (they are all on the belly side) :







It was rough sawn, so I used a sanding block (or rather some sand paper taped to a block,) to prepare the bow for a silk backing.





Preparing the handle to be glued:





Here's the handle afterwards, notice the huge horrible knot in the middle. (Although it does look all kinda cool,) I am hoping that the non-bending handle will keep the bow from breaking. I also have a dirty little secret... I actually think it already broke when I was floor tillering earlier,  . Can't be super sure, but I heard a tick and I think I identified where the grain might of lifted and separated, right at the huge knot. So we will see. Oh yeah, I forgot, the grain is horrible anyway,  . I guess everyone can just put money on which flaw is gonna be this bows downfall, seeing as there are so many.





Before I put the backing on, I decided to do some horn overlays. I guess I'm just trying to procrastinate the eventual death of this thing to be.

[mullet]

ERC is really cool when it blows ERC with mostly sapwood makes a stable, fast shooting bow.

[KShip85]

Watch your eyes if/when it blows.  I've nearly put an eye out with an exploding ERC

Kip

[okie64]

I would get it bending enough to put a string on it and then hang it on the wall. It aint gonna make it much past brace height. Good luck and be careful

[Zion]

Well hey i think it's worth a try. I would feel more confident working with a stave from a branch or sapling though, there's something i don't trust about that board   

[toomanyknots]

Welp, I absolutely hate silk. I will never try another silk backing if I can help it. No matter what, I can't avoid the wrinkles. So now I have a worthless backing, in my eyes. Yay. I am thinking I will let it dry, and then rip it off tomorrow and throw some brown linen on it in the morning.

[toomanyknots]

I would get it bending enough to put a string on it and then hang it on the wall. It aint gonna make it much past brace height. Good luck and be careful

I wish I had your optimism, you got alot more faith than I do, . Here is how the backing turned out, my 2nd silk backing I have done so far, and it is not getting any less aggravating. Linen seems to be alot more user friendly to me at least. Funny as well, as either I had not noticed until this morning, or it has warped overnight and now string alignment is off, and it will most likely twist. I know it was straight when I roughed it out, and it has been drying in board form for over 6 months, but I guess it could of still been holding a good deal of moisture. Woohoo! This bow just gets better and better!

[sleek]

Yeah, that backing is pretty worthless. The only thing it will do is help hold the splinters out of your eyes when the bow blows. But lemme tell you a secret. Thats all silk is good for anyways. Every bow I have ever backed with silk has blown cept for two. One hickory bow that I laid silk on to be a background for a snake skin I laid on top, and a mulberry that just had ugly sapwood on its back. I dont believe silk has magical properties to prevent a bow breaking, only to reduce how many splinters you are picking from  your wall, ceiling, and eyes. Good luck, and I would have tried that stick your working on as well. I would put a laminate over the back of the handle also to really help keep that knot stiff though...

[M-P]

Howdy,  I've only done a couple of silk backings but thought it went on quite easily and smoothly.  I think silk is kind of stretchy, so I applied a layer of TTB to the bow and then rubber banded one end of the silk down.  Stretching the silk it as far as I could, I rubber banded the other end and then started pulling the edges of the silk to flatten.   By then the glue is oozing through the silk and starting to "grab.   A damp finger smooths everything down.   
That said, I'm think most silk fabrics are not strong enough to help with this stave.   I've used them mainly for insurance on bows I was going to be giving away.   Sanding the silk smooth and applying linen, or other backing sounds like a good idea.   
I think this could make a working and beautiful bow, but hickory, bamboo or sinew would have been my choices.     Ron

[toomanyknots]

Howdy,  I've only done a couple of silk backings but thought it went on quite easily and smoothly.  I think silk is kind of stretchy, so I applied a layer of TTB to the bow and then rubber banded one end of the silk down.  Stretching the silk it as far as I could, I rubber banded the other end and then started pulling the edges of the silk to flatten.   By then the glue is oozing through the silk and starting to "grab.   A damp finger smooths everything down.   
That said, I'm think most silk fabrics are not strong enough to help with this stave.   I've used them mainly for insurance on bows I was going to be giving away.   Sanding the silk smooth and applying linen, or other backing sounds like a good idea.   
I think this could make a working and beautiful bow, but hickory, bamboo or sinew would have been my choices.     Ron

Thanks for the tips Ron. Next time I will take your advice, I might use clamps though. What I did here was lay down tb3 on the bows back, lay the silk over it, and try to stretch it and rub it in. Than put another layer of tb3 over it. The wrinkles aren't super bad, and are just mostly at the edges of the bow. The linen I have doesn't seem to be as good quality of linen as I usually have anyway, so I might just go with this backing and hopefully get the bow-splosion on camera?  ... 

Yeah, that backing is pretty worthless. The only thing it will do is help hold the splinters out of your eyes when the bow blows. But lemme tell you a secret. Thats all silk is good for anyways. Every bow I have ever backed with silk has blown cept for two. One hickory bow that I laid silk on to be a background for a snake skin I laid on top, and a mulberry that just had ugly sapwood on its back. I dont believe silk has magical properties to prevent a bow breaking, only to reduce how many splinters you are picking from  your wall, ceiling, and eyes. Good luck, and I would have tried that stick your working on as well. I would put a laminate over the back of the handle also to really help keep that knot stiff though...

I have had good success with linen. In TBB, I remember in the section of fabric backings, one person who makes red oak  bows commercially backs his bows with linen canvas, and said that they had a very small percentage of failures. To be fair, the designs are all low weight and low stress.

[ionicmuffin]

I have had good success with linen. In TBB, I remember in the section of fabric backings, one person who makes red oak backed bows commercially backs his bows with linen canvas, and said that they had a very small percentage of failures.
[/quote]

I would imagine that this is purely because the fabric was thick enough, i doubt that a fabric that is as fine as a sheet of paper(bit of an exaggeration) would hold a splinter down, you would need something about as thick as rawhide backing, or so i would think, makes sense right?

[toomanyknots]

I have had good success with linen. In TBB, I remember in the section of fabric backings, one person who makes red oak backed bows commercially backs his bows with linen canvas, and said that they had a very small percentage of failures.

I would imagine that this is purely because the fabric was thick enough, i doubt that a fabric that is as fine as a sheet of paper(bit of an exaggeration) would hold a splinter down, you would need something about as thick as rawhide backing, or so i would think, makes sense right?
[/quote]

Flax is actually a very tension strong fiber in general. Pure flax fiber is an extremely strong backing, but it doesn't stretch like a wound threaded fabric will, so it has a tendency to overpower the belly. Or else I would probably use some cheap flax and watered down tb3. The way fabric backings are supposed to work is the same way all backings work, in that they place all the tension stress on the back of the bow on their selves instead, so that they would have to fail before a splinter would raise, (hopefully of course). Or at least this is how a backing is supposed to work anyway, although it is very true that alot of the time this is not the case, and I have had a bow break under a linen backing, but that is rare, (for me anyway) and usually due to the limb twisting, in high stress designs, which are both my fault. I have zero experience with silk though. Maybe you are right, although if so, I have no idea why it is such a popular fabric backing? I do know the heavier weight linen is better than the lighter stuff, I will give you that for sure.

[PatM]

Doesn't hurt to use more than one layer of silk. A good tip is to  use the strip of silk to "reverse brace" the stave about two inches and then force the stave straight so the silk is stretched tightly.
 You can overlap the silk over the ends and bind it tightly enough so that it doesn't slip. Wrap one end first, use a clamp with the stave supported close to the ends on two blocks to reflex the stave and then pull the strip across and secure it tightly and then remove the clamp.
 Coat the back of the stave with glue first and then rub extra glue into the silk once it is tensioned against the back.

[toomanyknots]

Doesn't hurt to use more than one layer of silk. A good tip is to  use the strip of silk to "reverse brace" the stave about two inches and then force the stave straight so the silk is stretched tightly.
 You can overlap the silk over the ends and bind it tightly enough so that it doesn't slip. Wrap one end first, use a clamp with the stave supported close to the ends on two blocks to reflex the stave and then pull the strip across and secure it tightly and then remove the clamp.
 Coat the back of the stave with glue first and then rub extra glue into the silk once it is tensioned against the back.

Thats pretty clever reverse bracing the bow, I might try that, thanks. 

[PatM]

Defintely roll up your silk so that you are putting the equivalent of 3-4  layers on. Silk is reasonably similar to sinew but nobody would put a single layer of sinew on that's as thick as one layer of silk. You need some volume of fibers on the back.
 Once your backing is stretched out you can put a long strip of inner tube on top of it and then wrap on top of that to make sure it's perfectly flat. One more reason to use epoxy. You can completely close it off since it doesn't need space to dry.