Is this long bow salvageable?

[Iskelton]

Hello, recently my favourite long bow of 20 plus years developed a crack in the belly of the limb where a knot is and I was wondering if there was a way to repair it? I致e heard about rawhide patches and wrapping it with sinew strands but I知 not sure if it would help in this particular case. I値l take any advice you have, even if that痴 to shelf the bow, thank you!

[Eric Krewson]

I have repaired a ton of cracked bows but have to say yours is an iffy one.

This is just a speculative guess, may work, may not;

I would start by soaking the crack from in the knot hole and outside with with thin wicking super glue. Next I would fil the knot with superglue and sawdust to strengthen it and finally I would give the area 1" above and below the crack a two layer sinew wrap.

Like I said may work, may not.

[Hamish]

It would need major surgery. If it was my favorite bow, I would grind out the flaw and feather back into the good wood about 4-5" either side. I would use a urea formaldehyde glue, and glue in either a carefully shaped piece to fit the repair or several thin flexible pieces that will conform to the shape of the repair.

Trim the excess off, and retrain the bow to bend slowly, so the new wood can get accustomed to bending.

Not an easy repair, especially if you aren't experienced

[bownarra]

That knot is a major issue.
Unfortunately it wasn't treated properly when the bow was made. That area should have followed the grain and 'extra' width should have been left there. Like a rock in a stream the water flows around - follow the flow of the grain and these areas don't matter but cut through the grain and leaving no extra width is a game finisher - you can't add the width the knot needs to support it and the bow has chrysalled. When wood chrysals it has been past its elastic limit and will not regain its compression resistance no matter what you do.
I'm afraid it is toast.
 

[Del the cat]

Is that Yew?
I don't see it as too bad, to me it looks like a pinch caused by the hole where the knot was removed compressing (it should have been filled when the bow was made IMO).
I'd clean out the knot hole to sound wood, soak low viscosity superglue into the crack from inside and outside the hole . Clean the hole out againg and glue in a peg of matching wood.
If that looks like it won't hold up, then rasp out a nice long scoop of wood removing the entire crack (don't worry if it encroaches/overlapps the plugged knot) and glue in a patch.
Del

[Iskelton]

Thanks everyone for your comments! The bow is yew wood and at one point it looked like the hole was filled but with frequent use the plug fell out? I知 not very experienced with repairing bows but may give one of these options a go. It looks like most are the same thing, clean out the knot fill the crack with super glue and the knot with a plug. Would sinew wrapping help even with the orientation with the crack? That was my first thought but I was unsure if it would actually work as intended.

[Del the cat]

The key is taking care, excavate all the black crud from inside the hole, failure to do this is probably why the plug fell out. The black crud has no compresion strength (well tbf it has no strength of any sort! ) so you must clean it out to sound wood, the plug must fit snug and be glued in with a decent epoxy, the hole can be primed with some epoxy mixed with Yew dust to help fill any little corners/gaps that the plug doesn't get to. The plug can be clamped firmly in place as the epoxy is curing, I nip it up in the vice with the clean side of the bow protected by some wood/leather/old carpet etc... I don't think sinew wrapping will help as sinew works in tension and this is a compression crack/pinch.
This post from my blog shows the repair of a pinch on a 130# yew warbow! :-
https://bowyersdiary.blogspot.com/2016/05/warbow-preventative-maintenance.html
Del

[bradsmith2010]

did the bow get overdrawn,,??

[Iskelton]

Thanks del! I値l give that a go! Also yes the bow was over drawn, I知 quite embarrassed about that, I took it to a bow shop to get a string made but I guess it was too short, not knowing anything about brace height or anything about bows at the time I thought a large brace height was fine and over drew it  . However this bow breaking is what started the addiction to bow making.