Pat, perhaps I've been misinformed or at the very least misinterpreted what I read . What backing would be a better choice for trying to mimic the effect of sinew? In this particular case the added draw weight was the top concern. Someone around here(who exactly it was slips my mind at the moment) had decent results adding flax fibers with hide glue. That might be a closer match I would think.
As far as the knots go, as long as the swirl in the grain was surrounded by straight grain(no run out) it could be de-crowned and backed, right? Or would it still have a failure in it's future?
See, I'm already learning stuff and the sign ups aren't even finished.