To keep a bow from getting too dry

[Billinthedesert]

I was a reading a thread by loefflerchuck about a Gambel oak bow he built that blew up without out warning -- and the conclusion being it just got too dry here in the desert.  Wondering what steps can be taken to prevent this. Beeswax comes to mind. Any thoughts or experience trying to keep a trace of humidity in a bow?

[PEARL DRUMS]

Store it in your bathroom.

[loefflerchuck]

10$ humidity meter and a humidifier in one small room in your house. If you have a basement you might not have to use the humidifier much. Keep bows between 35% and 55% RH

[BowEd]

+1.I like analog humidity gauges.

[StickMark]

could on rub a wet rag on it occasionally?  Not joking.

[Billinthedesert]

Hmmm. The RH here in the Tularosa Basin often gets into the single digits. I wonder how the Apache and the Jornada Mogollon peoples before them kept their bows from breaking.

[StickMark]

Maybe they "overbuilt" them, for the draw weight?  In Arizona, humidity can go from 10% to 80% plus during monsoon season.  I had a bow go from 44 pounds draw weight to upper 30's, 38 if I recall, in one hunt. 

I sort of dry the bow out, high over a campfire coals in the evening, during the really humid days of our summer velvet season (also like how the smoke as I had some damp twigs adds patina to the whitewood).

As for adding moisture, I'm with you, perplexed.

[Billinthedesert]

Mark, I'm sure we'll see the same humidity swings here, too, in monsoon season.

[Hawkdancer]

I would bet the elders used some sort of grease, maybe mixed with beeswax!  I made up a 1:4 beeswax/flaws oil mix, but I think 2:3 might be better.  Rub it in well, whatever you use.  I treat most of my wood arrows with the mix.  Another finish is equal parts pine tar, linseed oil, and real turpentine.
Hawkdancer

[Billinthedesert]

Just started skimming through some of my resources, and see that Reginald Laubin says the Apaches often rubbed their bows with deer or bear fat. This should have helped seal the wood somewhat against humidity swings. Some Apaches apparently backed their bows with sinew; the Chiricahuas reportedly wrapped theirs. Laubin also says they grooved their wooden arrows, and that the Apaches had a reputation for powerful bows giving great penetration. He mentions one source who, in the 1800s, encountered a human skull pinned to a tree by an arrow and held there for many years. John Bourke ("Medicine Men of the Apache," Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1892)reported Apache arrows deadly to 150 yards and capable of penetrating six inches into a pine tree.

[StickMark]

Any mention of draw weight for Apache bows.  Seems those shorter draw bows do better with mid 50's. 

[Springbuck]

All finishes delay rather than prevent moisture entering and leaving wood, but definitely should prevent wide, rapid swings.

I'm not an expert on bows of those peoples and region, but the museum and reconstruction pieces I have seen were made of tough woods and sinew-backed.

[PatM]

Any mention of draw weight for Apache bows.  Seems those shorter draw bows do better with mid 50's.

The one Pope tested pulled less than 30.

[Billinthedesert]

Pat, I have seen reference to Pope's test before -- and somewhere a comment as to why this was an anomaly -- maybe in a discussion in one of the TBBs. I will look. The Apaches' fierce reputation as warriors scarcely comports with the idea that they were armed with 30-pound bows.

[PatM]

Perhaps but nothing really indicates they were armed with weapons of much more strength.  Museum bows and arrows indicate this as well as historical photographs.

 Bow strength isn't really a good correlation to how much warrior a guy is.