Bow split longways

[sleek]

Anyone ever have their bow start to split in half long ways? Im doing extreme bend radius experiments and the bows are wanting to unzip up the middle of the limb.

[Jjpso]

Happened to me once. I was in the midlle of tillering a fairly heavy recurve black locust HLD bow, and around 20” or so of draw, it just exploded and i was left with two half bows. It split in the middle. I think its because i didnt had the thickness right from middle of the bow to the edges! The hedges where thinner than the midlle.

[Mad Max]

Could round or flat belly have anything to do with it ?

[mmattockx]

Anyone ever have their bow start to split in half long ways? Im doing extreme bend radius experiments and the bows are wanting to unzip up the middle of the limb.

What is the limb cross section? Wide, flat sections want to cup when bent into a tight radius and that may be splitting the limb if the wood you are using is prone to splitting along the grain.


Mark

[Selfbowman]

Kevin I’ve had that happen during the straighten process. Especially when you have a high crown that you are trying to flatten a bit. It happens on the belly side of the limbs usually. It never has gone all the way thru on me before. I fill the crack with super glue and clamp mine. Don’t know if this is what happened in your case.

[Badger]

  Drying the wood too fast can cause this; it may not be noticeable until you start to bend it.

[Jim Davis]

By way of illustration, think of a half pipe shape where the back of the bow is concave and the belly convex. Bending that bow tends to widen the C section. The same thing happens, to a lesser degree, if the back of the bow is flat and the belly convex.

Millions of bows have been made and used that have that cross-section. But if the wood is easy to split and the physical limits are exceeded, the chance of your result becomes less unlikely.

[superdav95]

Yes.  More with semi or hld (hollow limb) bow builds.  I’ve also seen this with bamboo limbed bows.  I’ve have this happen more as others have indicated when heated and bend to outer limits of what bow wood can handle.  On a couple of my 5 piece boo bow builds that I’ve induced more reflex then normal.  The ones that survive turn out to be very fast bows but little harder to string.  Lately I’ve been building more deflex reflex boo builds.  I’ve put more mid limb reflex in the limbs where I want it and then deflex a bit through handle.  I have found that I don’t lose much speed at all and they are much tamer to shoot and string up.  They shoot like f glass recurves without the vibration and handshock.  The limb kit I sent you Kevin would make one of these when you’re ready!  Lol.  Let me know.  I was shooting a bit yesterday a take down version of these I designed with a shelf and had speeds of 180-185fps around 10gpp.  I know this is a bold claim here but will be posting a couple of these recent builds in a day or so when we have some clear days so that I can take some video.  Any way didn’t mean to hijack here but yes high crowns and hld ones more susceptible

[sleek]

Yeah, this is the 2nd wood bow to do this and I've had bamboo split too. I suspect the wood is acting like a linked tape measure, where the tape measure will flatten at the kink, a bow can't so it splits in the middle. I to am getting ridiculous fast speeds from my shorter bows and have decided a key component to speed is short bow limbs.

You bamboo kit is a phenomenal piece of work and incredibly impressive. You need to seriously market the crap out of that. Make some video clips of it describing and demonstrating it and I'll put it on the PrimitivearcherTV channel. I still have the one you sent me on my dresser by the bed. Its in my mind and I know it has potential. Im just not ready to put the time into it yet. I dont want to rush it even thought its designed to literally tie together. Im gonna experiment with it some.  The speeds you get are flight competition speeds. You just need to perfect recurring the limbs while they are green. You figure that out and I can take one to the flats and im certain it will break records with the right arrow.

Anyway, yeah, build a bow that looks like measure tape, it will perform like one when bent. Im gonna experiment with decrowing the next one so its rectangular. Thick wide rings will be needed to do that well.