The dreaded TICK.

[autologus]

I stopped by Home Depot on the way from work yesterday to see if they had anything decent to work with and after about 15 minutes of looking I found this very nice quartersawn 1x3x12 Red Oak board.  It had very straight grain for about 3/4 of the length so I took it home.

I halved the board and ripped the very straight grained half into 2 1 1/4" boards and the other half into a 1" and a 1 1/2" board.  My daughter has been wanting a bow so the 1" was for her a 30# bow.

I got it roughed out on the band saw 55" ttt, 5" handle, parallel limbs to 9" from the tips then straight taper to 1/2" nocks.  All was working well the tiller was looking good it was a little stiff from mid limb to the tips but I was working that down and had it starting to bend nicely. 

It was pulling 30# at 20" and I was starting to reduce the weight to get it to 25" and that's when it happened.  TICK I took it down, unbraced it and ran my hand across the back and felt the little crack.  It had a very small knot on the back that I hadn't even noticed.

Well the bow was a failure, but I will get something good from it so I pulled out the heat gun and decided to get some practice on bending the tips.  The first one I clamped down on my form and decided to hang a bit of weight to the other end and heat the limb and let the weight slowly bring the bow down to introduce the bend.  It apparently was too slow and I ended up over cooking the limb and it formed 3 cracks across the belly in the bend.

The second limb I tried a different approach, I clamped it down and started heating this time applying a little pressure with my hand and low and behold I was able to feel when the bow wanted to bend and started applying a little more pressure and it came down nice and smooth with no overheating or cracks.

I did not get any pictures of the flipped tips but here is where I was at when I heard the dreaded TICK.  The little dot at the edge of the limb on the closeup is the knot that failed.

[Josh B]

Do you have a good pic of the splinter that lifted?  It might be possible to trap the back and eliminate the problem.  Josh

[Tom Leemans]

Not too muck good to say about "tick". When your bow goes tick, that's bad. When you or your dog get a tick on you, that's bad. The clock ticking away just reminds you that time is running out. Stupid tick...

[autologus]

Unfortunately the crack ran a third of the way across, I just would not have felt good possibly handing my 14 year old daughter a Red Oak time bomb.  For $4.50 worth of wood and 4 hours time the lessons I learned flipping the tips was worth it, besides I still have 3 more boards from that original board.  That is the good thing about Red Oak boards failures are not very costly.

[k-hat]

Tom, don't forget about that pestering facial tick

Sorry bout your tick auto, but looks like you got some good lessons from it.  That's a winner anyway

[nlester]

Not too muck good to say about "tick". When your bow goes tick, that's bad. When you or your dog get a tick on you, that's bad. The clock ticking away just reminds you that time is running out. Stupid tick...

Couldn't agree more

[JW_Halverson]

Bugs in your bow wood are bad, no matter what kind.  Powder post beetles, borer wasps, and now ticks. 

Sorry, friend.  You'd be a pretty nasty Dad if you handed her a ticking timb bomb of a bow.  Better luck on the next one.

[Tortoise]

I always anticipate that sound. The great thing about red oak is that it is so cheap and readily available that you can get a new one up and working in no time!

[JW_Halverson]

Should we all chip in and buy him a can of tick spray?

[H Rhodes]

I hate ticks.