Did You Break Any This Year

[twilightandmist]

broke two this year. one osage recurve during tillering, and my favorite black cherry elb. the elb broke when i broke a nock on an arrow and essentially dryfired the bow, and it developed massive cracks immediately. my favorite bow oh well, just gotta make a new one i guess!

[Bryce]

Just one rawhide backed osage... go figure. 

No way!? That Molly???!

[dbb]

Havent had much time building this year,but im at 50/50 two working and two not soo much..
A birch longbow that "delaminated" in the growthrings A first for me) and a rowan pyramid that ceased to exist on the tiller,just went boom in very small splinters.

/Mikael

[Easternarcher]

I just broke a fine hickory backed osage last night at the club.
Snapped clean at right angles to the limb! Half way up the upper limb...no warning just POW! at full draw. So it is possible.

[Badly Bent]

Yeah 3 total broke this year. One very rippled stave of Amer. Hornbeam that broke on tiller tree at about 24" draw, dips and dives in contour of back made one area of  limb edge to thin. An experiment with Siberian Elm that fretted badly on belly was the second one for the year that failed, happened at floor tiller, bending perfect at a very light draw weight and just cracked on belly, junk wood in my opinion, very brittle. Latest was Buckthorm, knotty character bow that had tension snap at 27" full draw, was going for 26" but pulled to 27" to make sure safe, probably poor tillering on my part is the reason for that one breaking. Never got an arrow shot from that one.
Total made this year that held about 10 or 11.

[Poggins]

I blew one last night , I have been working on a chittamwood bow and just got a short string on it.
I knew better but I pulled it to about half draw when it broke just passed the fade making a three peace bow . It was 64" tip to tip and 62" nock to nock , the bottom limb still needed a little wood removed and as dry as it has been I should have put it somewhere humid for a few days.
First one is rather exiting when it blows though. Lesson learned.

[Mike_H]

Broke one yesterday actually.  Damned hinge I could not get rid of no matter how hard I tried.  oh well, back to the drawing board.

[pop shot]

I'm 2 for 5 so far, mostly due to me ignoring bad grain or not knowing any better.  the first was hickory with a prop twist that exploded at 29" on the tillering board and the last two were both red oak witha kink in the grain that i should've cut off if i knew what i was doing.  oh well, I'm just biding my time until my strawberry guava staves dry out.  then i'll be flush with wood and billets.  my 2 surviving bows were adequate enough to give me the bug pretty bad.

[BowEd]

Well I think I'm 3 for 4 for successful bows this year.The one that broke was a sinew backed red cedar that gave me no warning whatsoever on the tillering tree.The sinew delaminated the wood and split full length.Violent explosion.Like a FG bow when they go pow.I'm working on number five right now.My first dogwood.Good luck all you guys.

[Roy]

I've never broken a wooden bow. Never. They just break all on their own:) The Busterds:)

[mcginnis6010]

Had a rawhide backed oak flatbow explode on me mid upper limb. Happend where there was a small group of pin knots that i hadnt noticed beforehand. Shouldve slowed down a bit on that build i probably wouldve noticed the pin knots.

[VicNova]

I broke several when I was attempting to make a take-down. I am getting very close to making good one.

[ionicmuffin]

i broke 3 thus far. all of them were board bows, 2 were in the tillering stage. the other was overdrawn... the overdrawn one was about 40 lbs at 26" the other two i made some mistakes on, One of the two tillering breaks was when i violated the back of the bow and then it broke, the other one was just way to dry, kapow!

[Jodocus]

This year was my frist year of bowmaking. I ruined 4 staves, earlier or later in the process. One collapsed in the belly while shooting in, one lifted a splinter on the back when almost done tillering, one took so much set I stopped working on it, and one that I cut out green twisted badly while drying. Oh, and there was this yew that just disintegrated along a ring in the heartwood. wrapped it up and turned out a shooting bow, but I don't feel safe with it.