Reckon i'm upto around a hundred or so boo backed bows from elbs, plain flatbows to r/d. In the beginning I tried thicker thinner etc backings with this and that wood and found no noticeable difference. Now I found that a hand tillered boo backing made reasonably thin but not overly so combined with a tapered core is the way to go. Trapping the back if the belly has lower than desired compression resistance is the only effective way with boo.
Thinning backings to try and lower their stretch resistance for matching of bellywood properties is a waste of time. It is only the outer 1/16th of a limbs wood that does any work, back or belly. Altering what the 'spacer' is between the working sections of limb has little effect on those surfaces opposing forces.
There is the potential to make the core out of a lighter wood thus saving a little limb weight but again these things have very little difference. One thing I will throw out there (and see if anybody gives it a go
haha) is having a core that doesn't resist bending as strongly as the core wood in a normal limb has very interesting effects. This can be achieved with the use of a laminated end grain core. I'd love somebody else to try this one! The simplest way is with a pyramid, tri lam flatbow
Tillering skill and keeping set low trumps most other things in the finished bow.
