crack--help!

[DC]

Siberian elm is said to be brittle and very weak.

I've heard this too and I can't say that I've seen to many(if any) Siberian Elm bows on here. Have there been many successful SE bows?

[bradsmith2010]

I had a pecan crack like that for seemingly no reason,, it did look a little powdery,,I think it may have been a storage issue on my part,,,the stave seemed bad for one reason or the other,,, it exploded so I had no hope of any kind of fix,, 

[E. Jensen]

SE
~60# @28"

[simson]

First I have never used siberian elm, so no experience on that wood.
That check is a clear tension break,
maybe the sap is not elastic enough
maybe a trapped design should be used (compression strong wood?)
maybe the stick was too dry ... (storage?, mc-meter?)

[jeffp51]

I am thinking fungus.  There were also traces of something white between the rings in places.--also, it seems like the absolute back may not have been "real" wood.  I peeled the bark off right after cutting and it came right off.  Could it be the cambium layer --or some other wood-like part of the bark stayed behind?  In the picture below you see two elm staves.  The one with the wrinkled/textured back is a sister stave of the broken one. On the other, I scraped this stuff off--it is also a different tree--and came to a harder layer.  could the presence of this stuff have caused weakness in the absolute outer layer of the back, instigating the tension break?  the Crack runs more than one ring, so I am not sure.

[E. Jensen]

If you peeled the inner bark (phloem) off, you're fine there.  The cambium is only a single cell thick.  Most of what people refer to as cambium is actually the phloem.