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[puuku]

Sinew backing a bow puts the wood inside the bow under compression and keeps it from breaking, it doesn’t add much poundage, maybe 2.5 lbs it also allows you to use less then perfect staves that would otherwise not be suitable. If you have a good stave you can make a self or unbacked bow although even Yew English long bows were commonly Linen backed, which although not as good as sinew works pretty well and is easier to come by. Try making a few it's cheap fun and good experience. PS make arrows to they’re trickier.

[heyvictor]

Although archery is not one of my areas of expertise, I do shoot and have studied making bows some. 
My understanding is what puuku said. Backing a bow (with whatever) can make a less than ideal piece of wood work better as a useable hunting weapon. It allows the bow maker a bit more choice in terms of what piece of wood or type of wood they want to use.

The archery forum at paleoplanet.net has a bunch of really knowlegable people who could give you the full detailed explanation of exactly what backing a bow accomplishes and all the specifics of each kind of backing material.

[pidgeon]

if anyone is interested I have a spare yew stave that's been drying for a few years, free to a good home.

[incendiary_dan]

if anyone is interested I have a spare yew stave that's been drying for a few years, free to a good home.

I'll totally snatch that up if nobody else has.  I've been dragging my feet on making a composite horn bow for awhile, but having a nice stave might be incentive enough to get going on it.

[incendiary_dan]

I thought I'd show you all the happy end product of amateur bow crafting.  This is the bow I made a few years ago.  It was my first attempt at making a bow, and I managed to make many mistakes and somehow fix them, some of them fixed unintentionally.  It started off as a hickory flatbow, and I added silencers to the string made out of rabbit fur.  Later on, I attempted to recurve the ends, but only had slight success before I felt going any farther would compromise the bow and make it likely to crack.  I then backed the limbs with bamboo, and wrapped them in leather and artificial sinew.  The backing helped to level out a slight twist in the lower limb, as well as even the disparity between the flexibility of the limbs.  The finished product appears as follows: