affordable materials and bow backings

[DC]

I've been drywalling our spare room so drywall stuff is in my head. Has anyone used paper drywall tape as a backing?

[PatM]

People actually have.  There's a lot of argument as to how much protection glued on paper can actually do.   Paper phenolic actually has greater strength numbers than linen phenolic which seems counterintuitive.

  If you really want to use  "paper" it might be best to bend your primitive rules and get some fishpaper which is the old material used for fiber backing.

[Pat B]

If you think what paper is, it is wood fibers "felted" together to make up the paper. Add glue to the mixture it can be pretty strong. Take a piece of brown grocery bag paper add a coating of TB glue, let it dry completely and try to pull it apart, not rip but actually pull as happens when a bow is drawn.
You won't prevent breakage with any soft backing but you can help prevent splinters lifting on the back which is probably how a break initiates in many cases.

[PatM]

  People often forget to consider all aspects of the backing material.  The glue counts for a lot.

  Glass and carbon are nothing really without epoxy actually helping out.

[scp]

  People often forget to consider all aspects of the backing material.  The glue counts for a lot.

  Glass and carbon are nothing really without epoxy actually helping out.

Exactly.

And thickness. If we put enough brown paper or silk layers with enough epoxy in between, we might have pretty good backing material, possibly even better than hickory. We are talking double digit layers here. I might try silk fabric and hide glue one day.

[Pat B]

I'm talking a single layer of brown grocery bag paper or a single layer of silk, linen or burlap. More that that will add too much physical weight to the bow slowing it down. Consider what the backing is doing. All it is is something to hold down splinters, not holding the bow together otherwise. All it has to do is bend a little and recover.
If you are looking for ultimate strength try a strip of sheet metal. Now, that would be a strong backing although very impractical. We are talking about a simple solution for a simple problem...and still the best backing for a clean stave with a clean back is the back ring of that stave. It is way stronger than any applied soft backing. How about a pic of the back of your stave.

[scp]

 I sometimes simply use one dried but unprocessed back sinew on each limb with hide glue. I was wondering whether native Americans ever did that. And I read some evidence for that, even though I cannot assertain how many layers were used.

If one brown paper backing is useless, how about ten layers? I think even that much paper and glue would be lighter than rawhide, not to mention hickory or fiberglass.

[Pat B]

One single layer of paper with TB glue is not useless. Try the experiment I mentioned above. You might be surprised. Why would you think that. Multiple layers is too much.
 I believe the only Native Americans that used sinew were in the drier western states. The eastern woodlands were too humid for sinew backings. Most of the Eastern Woodland Natives use unbacked selfbows. They were longer so no need for backings.

[Woody roberts]

Ive always felt that the glue that soaked into the wood had as much to do with preventing a splinter from lifting as whatever backing was used. The backing being only part of the equation.

[PatM]

I sometimes simply use one dried but unprocessed back sinew on each limb with hide glue. I was wondering whether native Americans ever did that. And I read some evidence for that, even though I cannot assertain how many layers were used.

If one brown paper backing is useless, how about ten layers? I think even that much paper and glue would be lighter than rawhide, not to mention hickory or fiberglass.

   
    One of the bows in the Encyclopedia had that type of backing.

[RyanY]

I like to argue that backings are unnecessary if you pick wood with good grain. I’d have a hard time trusting a bow that I know has imperfect grain that was backed without something more robust like rawhide or wood. And I’d kick myself if it broke and I thought I could get away with it.