Wood heat causing catastrophic failures?

[Hickoryswitch]

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.

[George Tsoukalas]

I doubt it. If you have any pre break pics post them so we can take a look. Jawge

[Hickoryswitch]

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.

[Pat B]

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.     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!  
  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!!!  
  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.  

[wodpow]

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

[Badger]

   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

[Keenan]

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.

[Keenan]

Looks like Steve and I were typing at the same time.

[George Tsoukalas]

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

[gmc]

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.

[FlintWalker]

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.

[Hickoryswitch]

 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.

[El Destructo]

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

[Hickoryswitch]

I really need to use a humidifier here in the winter. The summer is a completely different story.

[El Destructo]

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.......