Flax Backing for wood-composite bow

[KenH]

Anyone ever used raw flax (not woven linen) to back a wood-composite bow?  According to a number of sources, including TBB#4, a combed raw flax or milkweed fiber backing can add drw poundage to a bow in a manner similar to sinew, but without the added weight and without the smelly aspect of sinew.  

I'm going to try my own version of Jack Ferrell's recent Akkadian bow (forerunner to the Scythian style bow) from ATARN.  Jack backed his with sinew, but I thought I'd try a flax back and see how that might work.

[David Flanrey]

Tried it.  Don't like it.  Very hard to put on compared to deer sinew.  I'll stick with sinew. Just my two cents.

[LittleBen]

My understanding is that flax is also has a lower strain at failure than sinew and is much stiffer. So if you made two identical bows one with sinew and one with flax, the flax bow would put more stress on the wood belly. I hunk you probably would want less reflex in a flax backed bow than in a sinew backed bow.

[macbow]

I've used the raw flax on one bow.
Agree it was somewhat easy to use. Took me some effort to find it to order.
Don't think I would go to the trouble again.
Would just use rawhide.

[halfseminole]

I would stick with the known quality of sinew and do some more research.  Unless you're retting your own flax, you don't know how it's been processed.

[mikkekeswick]

Originally posted by halfseminole:
I would stick with the known quality of sinew and do some more research.  Unless you're retting your own flax, you don't know how it's been processed.

Dead on. A lot of retting processes now leave the fiber brittle and weak. This is because very few people are making quality string that HAS to be strong...modern fibers do all those jobs now.
As also mentioned flax is very different to sinew. It won't stretch anywhere near as far as sinew and has totally different stretch resistance.
It will work as a backing for sure but not as a replacement for sinew. They are just too different.