Backing for cherry

[dragonman]

just noticed your name 'ekalavya' wasnt he the guy that got his thumb chopped off by Drona? for sewing arjunas  dogs mouth shut with arrows!!!

[ekalavya]

well, he chopped the thumb off by himself ... because Drona demanded a payment , because
he claimed to be his disciple or apprentice ... at least so far , as i can remember the story ....

as for all the question , the answer must be in trying it out ...
i once again read Tim Bakers chapter in the TBB 1 ... I guess he used 18" and 1/2" x 1/2" inch
for testing , because he wanted to have a quarter of a bow ... he further writes that the finished
bow should have 66" , so my best guess is he calculated 10" for nocks and handle and that
in fact he tested only 14"  out of the 18" sample wood and so giving his measures or test samples
one could use them for building a 58" bow with no real handle.

The deeper i get into bow building the more i want at least do the tests or experiments correctly.

[Springbuck]

Ek, it is a lot of work, but very possible to make a backing from an ash tool handle, like a shovel handle, or an ax or pick handle that is hickory. You have to look at a lot of them, maybe go to two stores, but when you find one with straight grain, both rings and radial grain, it works great. 

If you get an ax handle, saw it in half along the widest part the whole length, then plane or saw off the excess from each half.

If you get a shovel handle or rake handle, look for one that has thick growth rings. and chase off the rings that stand high one after the other, until the part that will be the back is wide enough and most of the roundness is gone except on the edges.  So, it is more like a fat rectangle cross section, not a circle. Then saw that into two halves and work the sawn side flat and even thickness.

[Springbuck]

Also, again it is a lot of work, but little elm trees grow EVERYWHERE.  If you find a small thicket of elms and cut a 10 cm tree with no knots on one side, you can take a backing off that.  lots of sawing, lots of sanding, but you can do it with hand tools.

[ekalavya]

Today in the library I reread the chapter on TBB 2 from Paul Comstock about the early
bows of europe. Therein he mentions the lost Stellmoor bows , which were made from
some kind of pine compression wood without any sapwood at all.

 ... and there came the interesting part ... they had no backing at all , and the back was
the splitted side or what's usually called "the wrong side as the back".

However they had the right "cross section" (D-shape) for a bow wood strong in compression
and the perfectly flat back perfectly fitted in.
And i thought that's it ... this way one can make a bow probably easily from 2.5" in diameter
branches of pine or 2.5" in diameter saplings of black locust.
(i measured a 5cm black locust stave i have at home ... and it has 3 cm of core wood)

The core wood is easily recognized by colour .... just the mark channel ( the ring or channel
in the center of the sapling) to be removed and voilà! the rest is done very easily without
any kind of decrowning or chasing a growth ring.
Sounds good , if this true and what he intended to say in this chapter. 

@Springbuck
I never seen Hickory ... so how could i be sure a axe handle and so on is hickory ...
suppose that is what you meant ... usually they do not write or mention the wood the
handle is made out of ...

[ekalavya]

Sorry , for mentioning the chapter in TBB 2 by Paul Comstock ...
I could find out it's "Ancient European Bows" which got translated to "Bögen der europäischen
Vorgeschichte" (which would be "bows of european prehistory" or so) and the wood mentioned
also is wrong in the translation, because there is no "Schottische Kiefer" but a common central
european pine ... usually named "pinus sylvestris"

Although it's mentioned in TBB 2 i could not find any picture of a reconstruction or replica
until now. And it is getting worse , some books ( for example Das Bogenbauerbuch (~ the bowyers book) )
even saying politely Comstock completly messed up on this.

Comstock himself in this Chapter mentions a walnut reconstruction by Tim Baker of a so called
"bow with reversed back" "backward bow" "Rückwärtsbogen" .... (could not find the original)
So i guess it's somehow working ... but even bowstring out of paper worked and yes , i shot
a miserable 15 lb hazelnut bow with it.

It's a pity but translating does not mean "making up words of your own". well, Luther did this
with the bible , but that was centuries ago and he had no wiki to help him out.