DANGEROUS CURVES
Over the course of history, composite bows have been built and used in a stunning variety of shapes and sizes.
But they all have one thing in common: rather than being made from a single stave of wood (self bows), or laminates of several layers of similar materials (laminated bows), they were composed of three or more layers of dissimilar materials, according to W. F. Paterson’s definition in the Encyclopaedia of Archery (1984). A clever combination of natural materials with different properties offers many advantages for designing efficient bows.
A bow is essentially a simple form of spring. When the string is pulled, the outer side of the bow, the back, comes under tensile stress, while the inner side, or belly, is compressed. In natural materials, such as wood, the amount of tension they can absorb before breaking is rather limited, which means that in order to accommodate a longer draw, the bow itself needs to be longer as well. The draw weight depends largely on the thickness of the stave and the individual properties of the
