Tear out in red oak

[Frode]

Hi all,
I'm working on a bend through the handle red oak board bow, no extra handle/riser.  Gotta do one some day, might as well be today, right?  It's 70" ntn, 72" to the tips, and right now it's pulling 20# @ 14", linen cloth backed.  I intend to bring it down to about 40# @ 28", partly because I still can't pull 50# without snapping my wrist with the string hard enough to provoke bad language, even through an arm brace.     Someday.  Also, I'm still chicken thinking about 50#+ on a board bow.
Any way, my question is this; on the belly/limb area, the fattest part, as I remove wood, I keep tearing out the soft ring material.  I'm rasping/filing/sanding at a very shallow angle to the grain, so there's not much getting around it, but will it cause any harm?  Can I just fill it and smooth it out with something cosmetic?  I have 40 to 60 half draw pulls so far, and no sign of stress.
First pic is bow braced to 6 1/2", second is an altered close up of the tear out.
Thanks,
Frode

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[George Tsoukalas]

Is it a crack?  Jawge

[Frode]

Is it a crack?  Jawge

Nope.  Just a spot where the hard grain gets feather thin and the file starts chunking out the softer grain.  No lifting at all, though it will snag a cloth.
Frode

[Frode]

George,
It actually looks more like I got crazy with a file and left a flat spot, but porous.
Frode

[Dauntless]

If that feathering out is on the belly of the bow, you have nothing to worry about.  It's just the early wood, which is spongier than the late wood.  Almost any bow made of a ring porous wood will have such areas.

As for the string snapping your wrist, a part of that can be avoided by the way you hold the bow.

Brace looks good too.

[Alpinbogen]

That's pretty common where there's a change in the growth rings and the soft early wood feathers between the harder late wood layers.  What happens is your rasp glides across the harder wood, taking a minimum amount of wood off.  When it hits the softer wood, it digs in and hogs it out.  To minimize this, you can alternate between your rasp and a scraper...the rasp making quick work and the scraper preventing gouges from worsening.  You can hold your scraper skewed across the belly so that it can bridge the harder layers as it passes over the softer layers and won't tear it out.  The scraper angle will be a mirror image from one side of the limb to the other since the soft layer makes "V".  Also, use 80 grit sandpaper on a big rubber sanding block (or wood block if it's all you have) to tiller the last inch or so of draw length.  Again, the block will bridge the harder layers so as not to gouge out the spongy early wood.  In fact, near final tiller, I don't use rasps at all and begin to alternate with a scraper and 80 grit.  This process creates a very smooth transition from hard late wood through early wood and back to late wood, virtually eliminating any step between the growth rings.

[Frode]

Thanks everyone,
Sounds like I need to go scraper shopping!
Dauntless, my archery instructor asked the same thing, ie. did I know what I was doing wrong, and I figured out I was rotating my wrist around to brace against a heavier bow than I was used to.  Whack!
Frode

[George Tsoukalas]

It's nothing then. Jawge

[NTProf]

I love simple, bend-through-the-handle bows like this.

[adb]

I'm not sure what you're looking at?? I don't think it's anything. It's certainly not "tear out." Tear out occurs during sawing or planing, when the blade actually pulls chunks out of the board face. Usually a dull blade, or hard wood.
If you're using a scraper and getting small divits, use your rasp instead. The scraper will ride over the harder wood, and make a valley in the softer wood, giving you wavey unevenness. Not a big deal anyway, but you can even it all out with some light touches on the rasp. The rasp will only remoe th taller high spots of harder gran. I alternate between scraper and rasp for most of my tillering, relying mostly on the rasp for heavy wood removal. My scraper sees only minimal work for chasing final tiller. And don't worry about a 50# board bow! With the right board(s), you can go much heavier (like double).

[Frode]

All's well that ends well.  When I slowed down a bit and worked through all the sandpaper grades things got a lot smoother.  There is still a rougher spot where the soft grain is more visible, but only if you know where to look.  The bow in questions is pulling about 35# @ 18" or so.  I'll clean it up some more and post finished pics (including full draw) tomorrow.
Thanks again, everyone,
Frode