Idea for highly stressed reflexed longer bows

[D. Tiller]

I was thinking after reading the chapters on heat treating and the one on backings. Why not use both flax fibres and heat treating the belly of a bow to create a high stressed design for optimum arrow speeds and cast?

I was thinking about shaping the wood in a form with either heat gun or use of steam. Then tiller the bow to under the weight you want it. Next heat treat the belly then glue on a thin layer of flax, as talked about in BBIV. Do you think this could make a better design or one simmilar to a short sinew backed recurve but without the stacking? Seems from what I was reading the flax is better for longer designs and getting them to perform better whereas if you sinewed a longer bow it would rob it of cast. What do you all think?

[tom sawyer]

Certainly that is a way to go.  I would only point out that a long design doesn't typically stress wood that much, due to there being not as hard of a bend.  To get a good performing bow you want all the wood working and working towards its limit.  So I would maybe throw in that you'd want to make this longer bow skinnier/thicker.  And I wouldn't add too thick a layer of flax, I don't know that it would add too much to performance since there is glue involved and the length would mean a fair amount of mass from the flax.  In fact I don't know that any performance-enhancing backing is going to substantially improve performance unless you are using a design that wouldn't hold up as a selfbow.

[D. Tiller]

I'm thinking highly reflexed, almost a C in profile and with working or non working recurves. Not sure on the recurve or paper thin using the flax to take up the tension and just a little very dense wood to take up the compresion. Or am I just spinning my wheels here?

[JackCrafty]

After reading about flax in TBB4, I bought some raw flax "line" and backed a hardwood shoot with it (using fish glue).......and bent it until it broke.  I was surprised to find that the flax did not keep down the "splinters" and failed at the same time and in the exact same places as the wood.  I did the same experiment with sinew a while back and the sinew was mostly intact after the wood failed.

Conclusion:  I don't think flax will help retain reflex or strengthen the back very much...unless the wood is very weak to begin with (like willow).

Heat treating, on the other hand, has definite possibilities.  I got really good results on ash and hickory.  I tried heat treating elm and the results were OK....but not as good as I expected.

IMO....I would forget the flax and concentrate on heat treating/tempering.