Quote Originally Posted by warty goblin View Post
The Inuit seem to have used bows of wood, bone or antler backed with sinew cabling. These cordage backed bows probably count as a form of composite. Obviously such a weapon would have to work fairly well in the cold to be worth the considerable bother of making. This suggests that the components of a composite retain their material properties in serious cold. This page gives some details.
Sorry, let me clarify. I'm less concerned with how they work in the cold (quite well, as we see) and more of what happens if you take a bow made in a very warm place to the gold, or for that matter try to take one of the Inuit bows mentioned to something like the Sahara. It's the change in temperature that I'm wondering about, not the temperature itself.