Thanks for nice comments and especially to all you that posted your pics of fish skin backings. I drewl...maybe not a sain reaction.
Well, I am a fishmonger in Sweden so I can have access to plenty different species such as halibut, seawolf, salmon, cod varieties, turbot etc, We used to get bigger sturgeons before and also eel and shark, Now ray, shark and eel are banned (which is very good in my opinion) so they are not easy to come by.
I did salmon too, inspired by a pic at Echo's archery site. Did not work out great due to bad preparations, I think it was a bad idea to glue directly on a finished, oiled bow. Rugged and washed with alcohol but probably too much oil in the wood left-had it explained to me by another local craftsman.
Will try again, looked promising.
We got sturgeon too but not same species so their skin aint that pretty as the ones caught off your westcoast-starlike as someone described it.
Anyway, I am generally not so impressed by painting and pimping bows for dandy appearance so the natural camouflage as well their function of preserving the back of the bow or other purposes is what works for me.
I am a little puzzled as to what glue would be best, titebond 11, fishglue...other? How muchglue is really necessary.
The bow you see on pic seems to work, has stayed on well for 3 years now so I did right that time..but failed the next and the next.
