Storing Bows

[Mechslasher]

i took a bow out to shoot a couple weeks ago and the damn thing snapped across the back, classic tension failure.  i built the bow about a year and a half ago.  it was well shot in, maybe 500 or so arrows.  i couldn't figure out why it let go all of a sudden then it hit me when i was working in my shop the other day, humidity.  my shop is in my house so it's heated and cooled with central air.  i'm thinking i may be drying my bows out and making them brittle.  anyone else ever had this problem??

[Hillbilly]

Chris, I usually have the opposite problem, trying to keep them from soaking up moisture until they're like noodles. I don't have A/C though.

[Pappy]

Mine will sometime pick up a little weight if they stay inside the house but I don't think
the humidity is low enough in my house to get any wood to dry.I have overdried Ash in the hot box,at least I think that is what happened,I had several snap for no other apparent reason
dry rot or just overdried.
   Pappy

[bowstick]

This happened to me once. I had made a vine maple.  Stored it inside the house for quite some time... I didnt realize it until after it broke but the wood was incredibly dry, the bow snapped in 3 places.  It was a stave I had split myself too.  The bow had been shot plenty of times before... but just got too dry.  This was when I lived in WA. State... since then I have moved to the east coast, and I couldnt dry a bow out if I tried

Justin

[mullet]

  Yep,Same with me.I have a room I keep my bows and soon to be bows in the final stage of tillering.I've had a yew and 2 cedars snap with very little flexing while tillering.They were real dry.My air conditioning runs about 350 days of the year 24 hours.I started putting them back in the shop when I was almost finished.

[Pat B]

Eddie, Check the Medicine Bow now and again in a few weeks and see how much it changes in weight in the AC.   Pat

[mullet]

  Will do.

[shaun748]

This is interesting because I have been wondering the same thing..  Even though I have a hickory bow I do not want to get below the safe MC percentage, but I definately dont want it to hold too much moisture.

Since I don't have a pin type moisture meter I have no idea how to verify the MC level so I have been weighing it here and there..

I had my "heat pipe" running about 12 hours a day at about 109 degrees & 20% and only lost about 1-2 ounces after about a week with the natural humidity running around 70-75% when the hotbox was turned off...

I just ran it for 24 hours straight last night and just barely lost 1/2 ounce.

Anyone have any idea how to convert weight loss to the reduction in MC for a finished hickory bow..

[mullet]

  I don't,but there is a store that sells tools with a name that is a safe haven for boat cargo that has a cheap moisture meter that works.

[shaun748]

Hey Mullet, You have any experiance with these meters??   I may need to break down and get one..

[FlintWalker]

I work at a large lumber mill and we have a guy that runs the dry kilns who says not to trust moisture meters.  He weighs samples of green wood, then bakes them in an oven until there is zero moisture. After that he weighs them again and gets the moisture content. I'm not exactly sure how the formula works but lets say a piece of green wood weighs 98 grams before drying and 85 after. He takes 98 divided by 85 and gets 1.152941176 then he says the wood has 15.2 % moisture. I don't know why but he says to pay no attention to anything to the left of the decimal point.  I dry all my wood using this formula and it has worked for me.  He dries millions of feet so I guess he knows what he's doing.
 I usually take a piece off the end of the limb to weigh. It don't take a very big piece but you do have to weigh it in grams for it to work.
  Another example would be if I took a sample from the end of a stave and it weighed 200 grams, baked it till it lost no more weight and it came out to 175 grams. Then divided 200 by 175 and got 1.142857143. My wood has a moisture content of 14.2%.  I would then take another sample from the other end or somewhere on the same piece of wood, weigh it and keep it in the same environment as the stave I was drying. From time to time, weigh the sample. We know it started at 14.2% and we want say 9%, if it's starting weight was 135 grams and it lost 6 grams, we would divide 135 by 129 and get 1.046511628 which is 4.6%. 14.2 minus 4.6 =9.6%. Once you establish the moisture content of a stave you don't have to take another sample, you can just weigh the whole stave if your scales are big enough and as it dries keep weighing it until you get the exact moisture you want.
  For this to work, your first sample must be dry as powder. Even after he bakes his samples for 24 hours he will put them in a microwave for 30 seconds at a time and cook them until they loose no more weight.
  I know this was a little off the subject but I thought it was worth sharing. I don't completely understand the formula but it works for me.

[shaun748]

that is interesting..I may have to do that because I have heard different opinions on the pin-type meters.

a few seconds after posting this I found a website that describes this formula---  http://www.ces.purdue.edu/extmedia/FNR/FNR-156.html

Here is just a portion describing the formula for weighing wood..
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Example(1)

The green weight of a specimen of red oak is 136 grams. Its oven dry weight is 100 grams. What is its moisture content?

Ans:

= the green weight = 136 grams

= the oven dry weight = 100 grams

(I MUST PARAPHRASE FROM THAT WEBSITE HERE BECAUSE IT DOES NOT LET ME COPY THE FANCY MATHMATICAL EQUATION)

green weight of 136 grams MINUS 100 grams of  oven dry weight=36% ,,,,To my high school educated eyes that appears to be the easy way to say it( of course the formula to do this looks much official)
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Here is an additional page from that same site which is very interesting in regard to seasoning wood, etc..

http://www.ces.purdue.edu/extmedia/FNR/FNR-155.html