gluing in reflex with silk

[Julian]

A properly applied silk backing certainly will hold reflex. It's more complex than just gluing down a thin old tie though.
  Commercial silk backings were manufactured and applied with a stretching apparatus and were well documented for offsetting set.

That's what I'd read about which gave me the idea, PatM.

[gfugal]

You're overthinking it.  The strip was clamped at each end between blocks of wood with sandpaper on them for grip  and then tightened with a mechanism like a turnbuckle at each end.  You only need to place a caul on the back(outside the backing strip) and clamp the bow to that if you want reflex.
 Tension on the strip doesn't mean you can't "bend" it.

Is this an accurate illustration of what you said or did I misunderstand something?

[PatM]

That's exactly it.  Generally though,  I think they just clamped the bow flat.  I would think after the whole thing was released the tensioned backing would draw the bow into a bit of reflex anyway.

Trying to locate the article. It's a bit tricky to find.  I know I've linked to it on here a few times before.

[George Tsoukalas]

What I used to do is take the stave through floor tillering and long string tillering. Put a 2 x 4 block under the tips...belly down, clamp the handle down to the surface and then back it with silk.

I think there's  silk backing info in TBB 1.

Jawge

[PatM]

Found it:
https://books.google.ca/books?id=oScDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA140&source=gbs_toc_r&redir_esc=y&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false

[Badger]

     When you stop to think that bow limbs only stretch and compress somewhere around .6% and only a small portion of that is in tension then it would require several thousand pounds of tension on that silk to get decent results. You figure the bow string is going to move about 28" including the brace tension and the silk is only going to stretch About 1/8" at the very most. The archer has about a 225 to 1 leverage advantage over the silk. A 10# gain would require about 2,000 pounds of tension.

[PatM]

The patent explains how it  al comes together.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/2285031.html