Can only Certain woods be sinew backed?

[Stick Bender]

TBB 1 has a list for you also good read on sinew probably would answer most of your Questions .

[loon]

...Maple?...
And horn!!

[Limbit]

Compressive values for wood can be found throughout different wood working databases. However, to understand the compressive value is a bit tricky because it isn't as simple as reading a number value for the wood's compressive abilities. To be honest, I understand you are new to making bows, but you might be thinking about this the wrong way. Your best resource on this information is the experience of the various skilled bowers on this site and other sites because they have done a MASSIVE amount of VERY CAREFUL experimentation between them trying to replicate classic bows and push the designs any type of wood can handle as well as expanding the known database of usable bow woods. Bowers are audacious in this sense.  LoefflerChuck has a video on youtube where he goes through the whole process of making an Ishi bow and talks about how he collected his wood. Check that out, he is a great bower. There is a known bowwood database on this site I believe as well as on PaleoPlanet. Although this doesn't usually let you know the compressive values of the wood, it does let you know if a wood is usable for a bow. Past that, what most people do to collect wood is just ask people who have land if they wouldn't mind you searching around for a tree. Usually, if you are willing to give them a bow with any tree you fell ,they will be more than happy to help you out. For Juniper, incense cedar and yew, you only really need a limb. So, although this may not be a popular opinion, I'll just cut a good clean limb off a tree as I see them and call it "pruning". I've never had a problem, but asking is far better. There is no need to cut in a national park. I'd just get some Incense Cedar limbs around your area. As far as sourcing wood....juniper is a bit hard to come by. The most common one you can find is Eastern Red Cedar (which is Juniper and not cedar). You can buy staves of it frequently on eBay or through some retailers on the net. Yew is harder to come by and you don't typically find incense cedar staves as many bowers don't seem to know it is a highly valuable compression wood. I helped a man locate some western Juniper a while back and there is a supplier of western juniper posts in Portland. He stopped by the yard and they helped him find a nice post that was mostly knot and twist free. Only cost him 15$ I think. You want the name of that place? Maybe you can road trip up there. Good luck!

[Marin]

What is the name of the place? And when you mean limbs of juniper and incsece cedar, about how thing in diameter were they? If you do not know, what thickness were they around?

[Marin]

Okay, now I'm confused...
I just found out one can back wide limbed hickory bows with sinew. I thought, as a hardwood, it couldn't be sinew backed well or is it true that not all hardwoods make bad sinew backed bows (only if they handle compression right)? Am I understanding that right? So that's why CA Bay won't make a good bow (because it doesn't have good compression)?

[bubbles]

You can sinew back any bow wood you want, and I'm sure you can find an example of any bow wood being sinew backed that is shooting arrows just fine.  There are definitely wood/sinew combinations that are more efficient than others (which have already been mentioned) but it's generally not going to kill any real bow wood if you sinew back it. 

[Limbit]

There is a difference between being able to make a bow and making a good bow. I don't doubt you could use Laurel for a sinew backed bow, the question is if it will perform well and last a long time. Sinew backing takes a lot of man hours to do and is nothing short of tedious. That being the case, you want the best bow possible when you are done with all that work. People back sinew on just about any wood. If the layer is thin, it just acts  a backing to keep fibres down. If it is more than three layers, it will typically begin to recurve the bow as it dries. The achieve a good sinew backed bow, the bow is reverse strung as the sinew is placed on it, causing the sinew to set in the opposite direction of the final bend creating a great deal of force and a GREAT deal of compression on the belly wood. Usually horn is used because of this since it takes 8x the compression of wood. Compression is tricky because sometimes there appears to be nothing wrong with the bow for a good long time and then compression fissures and eventually failures form with continued use. So, it is better to use wood high in compression and light in weight if you want a high performing, long-lasting sinew backed short bow.

[Limbit]

Oh, and the limbs I've taken are around 3-4inch in diameter. I took them off a very old Rocky mountain juniper tree outside Boulder CO. Incense cedar grows quite straight and tall, so it might be a bit hard to get up to a branch!

[Jodocus]

"Compression strong" as generally used refers to two different qualities. There are dense, hard woods that simply will not be compressed much by a given force (dogwood, hornbeam and the like), and on the other hand lighter woods that will be easily compressed quite a bit by the same force, but will recover from substancial deformation without taking structural damage (such as yew, black elderberry, or cherry). The ladder are what I'd use with sinew. I have only built a few bows of that type, but trapping the section as much as possible has had the best results for me on wood and sinew bows.

[Stick Bender]

I was just curious which Ishi design your where referring to all though he made many different designs  I think primarily he preferred the narrow handle Pyramid or parallel limb , I'm attempting to make a narrowed handled bendy for my 8 th bow & only 3 rd  sinew but a little nervous as that type of bow takes a keen since of tiller from what I have been told , if this is your first sinew bow  it might be a little difficult to do , but don't know your skill level ?  But there's some exstreamly skilled guys on here that probably would give you a hand , I know from the 2 sinew bows I made I'm glad I  did simple designs  as sinew has a lot of quirks to learn

[Marin]

Thanks for all the answers,
The ishi design I was referring to was mostly just the common (I think it's a paddle bow?) design he made which is shown in Yahi Archery (Pope). Yeah, I haven't sinew backed before and have been doing Reasearch into the question of wood sinew combinations and all of these answers have helped. I'm a beginner and am just trying to figure out how sinew affects the wood and why certain ones can't be sinew backed.