First post, first bow, first chrysals...

[Bernal]

Hello!

I've been reading the forum for months and visit several times a week for my fix of inspiration and tips. So I want to start with a big thank you to everyone.

I completed my first bow today. Hurray! I can't wait to get started on my next now. I made a lot of little mistakes here and there along the way, but I'm reasonably happy with the results.

The bow is 71" tip to tip, 69 1/2" nock to nock, 49# draw at 28". Made of red oak from the local hardware store and finished with Watco Danish Oil (dark walnut stain). Leather grip with a removable horn arrow rest.







Here are the chrysals that appeared late in the tillering process and are on the belly of the slight hinge in the right limb. My limited understanding of chrysals is that they aren't an indication of imminent failure, but as long as they don't grow into full on cracks they just cause the bow to be a bit more sluggish than it would otherwise. If that's wrong, please correct me.



I haven't gotten to shoot it yet, but will take it to the practice range tomorrow night and see how it shoots.

Now... I think I'd like to try hickory next! (yes, I'm hooked)

--Bernal

[George Tsoukalas]

Tiller looks good now. I don't see a hinge. Where was it? Did you fix it. Too bad you got some chrysals. The hinge probably caused. They can be fatal to a bow. The bow could eventually fold on itself. Not telling how long it would take. I assume you fixed the hinge. You might try gluing some rawhide over them.  Congratulations  on your bow. Jawge

[Prarie Bowyer]

You will love hickory.

[johnston]

Good looking bow, nice detail work.

Chrysals are supposed to be caused by either a bad design or imperfect tiller. I have had 4 red oak board
bows develop them after thousands of shots and they all cracked. Mind you the chrysals appeared and within a hundred arrows
it was all over.

After autopsy I think I found my mistake in tillering and it was common to all four bows.Hey I am a green bowyer . But, I also
believe that the wood has been treated in such a manner that it has become dry and brittle. For whatever reason it will
not rehydrate.
Built a ROB bow yesterday and before shooting it in I bathed it in linseed oil. The wood looks better but we'll see.

Lane

[aznboi3644]

A bow is under tremendous stress at full draw...and if the chrysals are in one spot.  That is the weak link...I wouldn't call it a long lasting bow and it could hit u in the head in the future.

[soy]

Welcome, congratulations, and im sorry to hear about your chrysals...but on a bright side it is a first one done and the addiction has started

[JW_Halverson]

Around here we have a saying, "If you ain't breaking, you ain't making."  Many of us believe you have better opportunities to learn from the bows that fail than you can from one that just magically appear.   Welcome to the addiction, it's worse than the Hotel California where you can check out any time you want but you can never leave.

[mikekeswick]

A chrysal or compression fracture is where the wood fibers on the belly have basically been 'asked' to take more compression than they can take. Unfortunately they are permanent. They occur when a section is either just plain weaker than the rest of the limb or there is a stiff spot on the tipward side of where the chrysal is. Either way the area is just too stressed. If you get them evenly distributed everywhere on a bow then give yourself a pat on the back for good tiller but make the next one wider for the same draw weight or a couple of inches longer.
My advice would be to make the same design again for your next bow.
Can you see how the bend on the right hand limb is more concentrated in the inner third or so of the limb? Also the tips on both limbs are a little stiff for a pyramid bow - this will increase stress on the inner limbs. A pyramid bow should bend in more or less a perfect circle but slightly flatter out of the fades.
Good luck with your next one.

[Bernal]

Mike, you nailed it. The more concentrated bend in the right limb is where the hinge appeared as I tillered through the 20" draw region. I worked it out for the most part. The chrysals are lightly distributed over about 12 inches of that part of the belly. Getting the tips to move a bit more is a goal of mine for the next bow, for this one I didn't address their stiffness aggressively enough early on and hit my target draw before I got them to bend appropriately.

[ErictheViking]

Making a perfect first bow is the perverbial white whale, always talked about but rarely seen! That being said you did better than most by not having to make your first into a kids bow because of impatience and taking off too much wood. 49# is a perfect weight for a bow Imho. Add to that that you did get the tiller pretty good. now you just do the next one taking into account what you now know you did wrong. Btw very nice looking bow, hope it holds up awhile so you can shoot this one while you build your next.

[PEARL DRUMS]

Oak is very sensitive, and in my experience forms chrysals easily. It makes a great, affordable bow but can be finicky. For what its worth I have an oak board bow from a long time ago that formed frets like a dog right off the bat, then it stopped and I just kept shooting it. It still shoots to this day with all kinds of fractures on the belly, both limbs have plenty of them! Apply that exact same tiller job to osage, hickory or elm and those fractures wouldnt be there.

[artcher1]

Just me, but I think those frets could be more from soft unseasoned wood more so than any tillering job. Your tiller does look good enough to distribute the stresses. Do you know the seasoning time on the wood?

[PEARL DRUMS]

Its from a board Artsy. Kiln dried Im sure.

[Bernal]

I got to try out the bow tonight and was very happy with it. It shot accurately and felt comfortable to shoot. It was very cool to be able to shoot something that I made myself and to have it work better than the bows I've bought.

After a couple hundred arrows, the belly had more chrysals fairly evenly spread across the working part of the limbs, but they were all very tiny and don't seem to be much of a problem at this time. The bow gained another half inch of set for about 2 inches total set.

[nathan elliot]

A couple of years ago I went to a primitive bow shoot here in Germany. Nearly every white wood bow had some small chrysals. Its also worth mentioning that I had a tree of heaven bow develop them when shooting in very cold weather; -15c. They are not always the end of a bow either, yours look quite small. I sometimes think that you can make good bows from wood like ash, oak, hazel etc but the wood is always complaining, even when the tiller is to your eyes spot on - some little imperfection in the wood and a little to much pulling and you have problems. In my humble opinion new Bowyer's should use Osage or yew, very forgiving wood that just wants to be a bow in the first place.