Originally posted by pipe:
all of you leaving your bows strung,...are those all wood bows? I keep reading references to fiberglas.
thanks
No, these are not all wood bows. They have glass laminations on the belly and the back. They are generally not suseptible to string follow (curving toward the string when unstrung).
Self-bows are one single piece of wood with no backing of any kind. They will all develop string follow over time. This will happen more quickly if they are left strung.
Backed bows have something, rawhide, bamboo, another wood lamination, sinew, etc., glued to the back of the bow to help it resist splintering. I would guess these should also be unstrung, but I don't have much experience with them, so it may be okay at least with some of them. Someone may chime in with the answer to that.