It is no more. I did get a chance to shoot it a dozen times before the stress got to it. I re-glued it and am going to cut the handle off at the fades to use as a reference for my next bows. That handle with the shelf was outstanding and fit my hand like a glove. The pic is it at full draw today just before it blew.
The 'sour grapes' thought is that it wasn't the best piece of osage. It had some twist in the top limb and the bottom limb had a pretty good bend to it, as well as having several pin knots ...two of which were side by side 1/2 of an inch apart right out from the bottom fade. I couldn't get it to bend like I wanted it there. The top limb was still a little stiff past mid-limb, but wasn't bad and that was what I was working on when the handle cracked yesterday.
BTW: I was wanting to see if everyone could guess what happened to make that failure. The short story was that I dry fired it (accidentally of course). The string I was using for tillering was a take-off of another bow I had. The strand and serving combination gripped the carbon arrows I had loose, but OK, however I grabbed a D. Fir shaft in my haste going out the door to shoot it. The wider nock slipped the string when I was drawing it and it stayed on the string, but slid down the string while shooting it. The arrow ended up flying nearly straight up and landed about 10 feet from me while I stood there gripping the shattered handle. At least that is what I think happened. (LOL!!!).
[attachment deleted by admin]