Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: KShip85 on November 28, 2012, 10:15:25 pm
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I've heard of people using dog chews for bow backing. My local hardware superstore just dropped the price on 24" bones from 14.99 to 5.99. Are these worth it as backing to go stock up on? I bought one before the went on sale and after soaking and stretching ended up with a piece roughly 10"x48". I was surprised by the size and uniformity for the most part. What do ya think? Worth some investment?
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Why not, you can always cut them into strips, dry them and sand them to the thickness you want. They seem cheap enough to try out.
Grady
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I'm curious about this to...
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I have backed lots of bows with dog chew rawhide. It works great! It does vary in thickness, but I just reduce it once it is on the bow. I use string to hold the rawhide in place which also holds down the the irregularities while the glue dries. I even use leftover pieces to make hide glue. Buy a bunch of them! That's a good price! Dale
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All the rawhide bones i see in the UK are way too short, even if I were to splice at the handle.
Would be great to see a picture of the ones you get over there so i know what to look out for.
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By the time you unravel the 24" ones, they are plenty long for half the bow, and wide enough to cut two strips. Dale
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I tried this a couple of times without success. My two cents is to save your money and spend $15 on a nice set of rawhide backings, they're three times thinner and of uniform thickness.
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I've never rawhide backed a bow before. Do you cut the extra rawhide off the bow after the backing is glued on, with a box cutter or something?
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Ya, you just trim the excess with a knife or zip it through the bandsaw, and then clean up the edge with a file, filing from the back toward the belly so it doesn't catch on the edge.
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I'm with t.m. .....dog chews were always too thick for me to work with..... I bought goat rawhide that is the perfect thickness has done several bows and will still be able to do a couple more out of it... I also bought a drum skin that worked really well.... nice and thin..... but most of the time I'm putting it over sinew so it helps to be thin...