Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: Hickoryswitch on January 19, 2010, 12:17:58 am
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OK so I just finished an Osage bow this morning and well it's laying in pieces on my workbench. I had shot the bow probably a couple hundred times in the last week. I have been storing it in my living room as I got it ready to put a finish on. I use wood heat from a hot air furnace so it gets pretty dry in the house. Could this be the cause for my catastrophic failure? I shot it twice and well a half this morning and it exploded quite literally. I keep it about 75 degrees in the house.
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I doubt it. If you have any pre break pics post them so we can take a look. Jawge
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I don't have any pre break pics unfortunately. I will post some post break pics though. I need to add that bow has been stored in the house for about 3 weeks while I was tillering. I also heat treated the belly about a week ago. Some of my other bows have picked up weight. Especially my unsealed bows.
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I have a wood heater in my living room and it is our only heat. Winters here, like most everywhere, are very dry. My bows stay inside our heated house and in 99.99% of the time they don't blow to pieces because they are too dry. If you live in Utah they might. ;D ;) Where do you live?
The hunting bow I made for this past season had 500 to 1000 shots through it when it blew...into many pieces. It was quite exiting! ;D
Wood bows fail. Study the pieces and see where the break began and find out why it broke. Them it is not a loss or failure but education!!! 8)
There were two reasons my bow broke...it failed at a knot on it's back...but I pulled it an inch beyond where I should have. ::)
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my self bows will gain poundage in a dry heat. Your bows back was put under a stain from the belly tempering and was just looking for a time to brake and the dry heat did it when like a cracker it failed to flex as the belly ask more of it than it had to give
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if the bow was built in a higher humidity the extra dryness could have pushed it over the edge. years ago I wanted to show off a bow to Tim Baker ( osage) I left it in the car all week to get it extra dry, shot the bow for two years almost before this, The bow expoded right before full dry when I went to show it to him. Steve
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I will agree with Pat and Jawge, I have wood stove for heat and our house is always toasty, also very dry climate here. However if the wood was not completely dry when you made it and then brought it inside for the first time, it very well could have dried more and gained a few pounds causing the failure.
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Looks like Steve and I were typing at the same time.
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The osage bow I just built was at 6%. Pretty dry here in NH during the winters and humid in the summer. How's that for combination? Yet, my bows do ok. Hickory, don't worry about it. I still break them. Jawge
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Hickoryswitch:
What's the relative humidity in your house? Better yet, the location the bow was stored? I heat with a gas fireplace insert (wet heat) mostly and the RH hung around 38% over the last couple weeks due to the cold weather until a few days ago. Your bow could have been easily in the 7% MC range @ 75 degrees. This is good for Hickory but I'm not sure about Osage, haven't used it enough yet to know. I'm just sayin with the other posters remarks on tillering a bow in a more humid environment, which no doubt it was. Sounds like your bow was stored inside long enough to be at equilibrium MC with its surroundings.
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The RH in my house was 24% last week. If the temp was 75 degrees... it could cause the MC of osage to drop down to dangerous levels.
Yes, it is possible it got too dry. It all depends on how dry the air is in your house.
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Pat B I live in Ky. GMC I'm not real sure about the Rh in the house. The bow was stored pretty near the vent though. The bow I got from Aries for the x mas trade was unsealed and it gained alot. Stored in approximately the same area. Which is kinda what lead me to ask if that could have been the problem. I believe it may have been a weaker spot to begin with that was made worse by the moisture content. That and my superior bow breaking skills. ;D
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I don't worry about the M/C....We have a Humidifier...and We dump about 14 gallons of water into the Air every day here...Relative Humidity here right now is about 18%...drops to 5-10% in the Summer....but the House stays at 50% all year long
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I really need to use a humidifier here in the winter. The summer is a completely different story.
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Wayne....we got an inch and a half of snow this Winter.....ain't rained since July....We have been in a Drought here for 8 years now....Lake Meredith is a Mud Puddle now...Down from 113 foot...to 44 and falling fast...what used to be a 12 mile long Lake...you can cross the Dam and see the end of it now...and there is 200 foot of Beach at the Bottom of the Dam...with Salt Cedars growing in it now....wish we would get some moisture...was supposed to be an EL NINO winter...with high rain chances...well I guess it went South of Us......... ::).....Hickory works like crazy here as a Bow wood....... ;D
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In my last house, I kept all my bows on the wall just a few feet from our wood stove, which we burned almost around the clock in the winter. That room was always 75 degrees+ (and sometimes into the 90s when we'd get the thing really going), and dry as a bone. Though that storage situation was less than ideal, I shot those bows in my backyard all the time through the winter and never had a problem. On the belly toasting, I can say the first (and last) osage bow that I ever gave a belly toasting was conspicously also the only bow that ever popped a splinter at a pin knot on the back a week or two later.
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Post some pictures of the failure, bet somebody can help sort this out.
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Here is a pic of the break. It looks to have started at a wrinkle and went from there.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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Did you cut into another ring? Looks like it may be. Jawge
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I've had bows break for seemingly no other reason than being to dry here in the house in the winter time. We have forced air wood heat also. I'd keep them away from the heat source and moving air in the dead of winter. There is such a thing as to dry for most bow woods.
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Its really hard to say. I'd recommend buying a cheap humidity ga. at Walmart for a few dollars and finding a suitable place in your house to store the bows. I just built a bow rack next to the fireplace to store mine. There are pretty big swings in humidity in my house and it really matters for wooden bows to store them in a suitable environment. Pretty much living in the same area, being too dry is usually not a problem.
I guess we learn all we can and move on to the next one.
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did it delam around the end of the limb looks like what George said maybe the late growth lost it's ability to flex and sheared in side from the dry conditionand the belly being stiffer than the back and lost inner suport and delamed
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Downstairs, where my wood stove is, it gets down to 8-10% humidity. Way low. even seasoned 3 year old osage staves got splits on thier backs. I quit storing them down there.
Best bet is to get a cheap humidty gauge.
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Moisture has more affect on the compression than the tension. Most woods gain more compression strength as they dry, below 6% they actuallystart to get weaker in tension, dangerous combination. Steve
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Well I bought a cheap humidity gauge the other day. It has been 32% in my house at 76 degrees. It has been 50 degrees and rainy outside so thats pretty low for inside isn't it? What is too low of an MC for osage?
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Well I got a moisture meter and checked all my bows. The highest reading of the bows was 7%. The rest fell between there and 4%. So now I have another question. How do I rehydrate these bows to 9% or there abouts? Any Idea how long it would take to rehydrate so I can shoot again?
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I keep Our House at 50 percent Humidity all Year long...and My Bows are at 10-12 percent all year long too
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Yeah, that is pretty low. I bet if you experiment a little with moving your gauge around in the house you will find that perfect place you are looking for. I don't think Hickory will mind much but other woods may want to be a little more moist. At that temp. it would take 50% humidity to yield 9% MC. To me that's still too high for Hickory but it may be just right for the yeller wood, again I don't know. Another option would be to add moisture back to the air as EL mentioned or at least that's what I think he was getting at. Far as re-hydration, that sweet spot you find in the house will bring them back up to EMC in a short time.
Where did you get your moisture meter? Tell us about it, that's pretty scientific. How accurate do you think it is measuring the outside of the wood? Just asking, never used one.
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I borrowed the moisture meter from a friend who builds cabinets and furniture. He says it is accurate. It sends an electrical current through the wood and measures resistance I think. It is a Wagner Dual depth Moisture meter. I closed off a room in the house where I can store my bows it is more humid and should do fine.