Bad wood or just me?

[Prarie Bowyer]

Hi all,

so I got some "Lyptus" wood from the Woodsmith store.  In grain it looks allot like Ipe but it's pink and not as heavy/dense.  The stuff is super rigid.  I tried to use heat to bend it with pre-tapered tips around a 5gal bucket radius bending form.  Broke all over the place.  I set that blank aside and figured I'd just go for a plain bamboo backed ELB.  nearing the home stretch I developed cracks just above the handle bump.  Dropped the weight and moved the handle bump... Developed two more sets of fine cracks.  Sawed off the backing and gave it a test pull.  pulled fairly far but with a hinge at the cracks then of course it gave.  The bow was hardly taking any memory as I tillered it.

So the question is.  is it possible that Lyptus is terrible wood for bow making.  could it be that board?  The grain seems to run pretty straight.  the wood has a "dry" feel to it.  Maple feels waxy or oily to me in a certain sense.  I have enough in the board to get 3 more staves but if it's a terrible wood then perhaps I'll just make a mess of arrows.

Or was it me in the tillering?

Oh, I developed some limb twist in the other limb.  At one point I got all confused about where wood should come off.  Does it come off he opposite side because it's too strong ?

[Pat B]

Some of the tropical woods don't react well to heat bending. You may have to use a kerf method to get it to bend to the shape you want.
 Feel the thickness of the wood at the twist and remove wood from the thicker side.

[Prarie Bowyer]

Fort he ELB there were no recureve bends.  I've decided to work only in bamboo, hickory, and Osage orange, maybe birch also.  Stickign with what I know will give high probability of success.  Sucks spending hours an a plain bow to have it explode.