Rawhide backing..a pictorial

[the Ferret]

Thanks guys...

Timo thought about that, but the way the wood snakes back and forth the rawhide barely covered some outside edges of the curves and draped over some of the inside edges of the curves and would have been real tough to trim off evenly.

Bue the caribou rawhide sounds neat. Strange that they would have such thin hide and such thick hair. This calfskin is hard to measure. The dial caliper barely moves and still basically reads zero ha ha. In comparison the deer rawhide I have measures about .020 and the elk rawhide about .035. Would be tough to back a bow with the elk rawhide..too thick!

[the Ferret]

OK...back at it..

Since it has now been 24 hours since we wrapped it like a mummy, it's time to unwrap and see what we have

 

Oooh..looking good! Here it is totally unwrapped

 

[the Ferret]

Next we take a small 4 cornered rasp and using the rounded smoother side and stroking from back to belly we start cutting off the excess rawhide that was wrapped around the limbs edges

 

We continue this following any humps or dips cleaning up both side and tips of the bow

 

[the Ferret]

And here is our bow with a fresh rawhide back all cleaned up.

 

At this point you could either paint, stain, or seal the rawhide as is. In the case of this bow, later it will get a snakeskin backing over the rawhide for decoration using basically the same procedure we just used for putting on the rawhide.

To see where this bow goes from here, please see the thread " The Perfect Snaky Osage Bow..part deux"