When I see Weylin & others back a bow with silk, I'll be more inclined. The people making the kinds of bows I want to make are using elk & deer tendons with hide glue or glue the cook down from sinew scraps. Apparently it makes a huge difference. On horn bows it reflexes the shit of the bow by the time it gets half dry.
Funny you mention that, I actually just took some staves and lemonwood out to Weylin.
BS’d a few hours. Made me late getting home 😂
The reason you don’t see silk is Bc we often put them under skins.
It’s not an attractive backing, hence the covering with skins.
I make my own hide glue, most of us do. It the strongest natural glue around. I’ve backed many a bows with sinew. In fact I just posted one a couple days ago.
Check out the build along section. You’ll see some silk being used. It’s a good strong natural backing. GORDON has the best and easiest to understand builds.
Most the bows posted on this site have no backing at all. Or backing for decorative purposes only. Sinew
only gives you benefit if the bow is designed for it. For horn bows there's only a very select few on this site that do it and do it well enough to even go through the amount of work needed in making one. I'm definitely not one of those guys. A well-designed board bow will outshoot a poorly-executed sinew or horn bow. The bows you say you want to make like others you see on this site I guarantee you the makers have quite a few bows under their belt before they ever even attempted what you're looking to do. Keep it simple and be humble, a lot of people on this site that can give you a lot of good help if you approached it properly
+1 your first horn bow will make you almost feel like a newb again.
