Interesting Piece of Hawthorn

[Zion]

I got this small sapling probly 2 months ago and roughed it out a few weeks ago, had some problems with twist, etc....

Now i started working on it again. I am having some problems with string alignment. Luckily its tracking to the side i shoot off of.

The only thing i'm concerned about is some chrysals that appeared on the belly of the top limb. I think they happened when i was trying to heat-bend the limb into alignment. On the other hand, one of the other hawthorn bows i made had some gnarly chrysals too, and it is a great bow, so idk.....

Some pics of my progress.

[Zion]

It's kinda a funky piece and there's a pretty big kink in the top limb. It adds some recurve tho, which i think looks pretty cool.

Does anyone know any cures for chrysals? Does heat treating help strengthen the wood where the chrysals are? I will definitely super glue em and wrap the area later in the process.

[blackhawk]

The causes of frets are green wood,improper design,poor tillering and stressing an area and pulling farther than you should before correcting the flaw in tiller.

By the looks of it you are bending green wood still and its not quite seasoned yet,you can tell from the string follow you already have..hawthorn is really dense wood and it takes awhile to get it to proper MC....and I think your pulling it too far before its ok to be pulling it that far. And your design is prob a lil short and under designed for the weight if your going heavy weight again. Just my two cents

[Zion]

Thanks Blackhawk. It seems pretty dry to me. In my experience hawthorn dries super quick.

I admit i got a bit impatient and tried bracing this thing too early which i'm sure caused some problems lol

The length is pretty safe for me cuz it goes up to my nose, so i'm not worried about that. Based on your experience with this stuff does it chrysal easy? or was it just my impatience? Are chrysals even that dangerous?

[Weylin]

I wouldn't say that chrysals are physically dangerous in the sense that the bow likely wont blow up because of them. But I think they are a bad sign for the performance and longevity of the bow. The belly is failing right there it will only get worse every time the bow is stressed, never better. It seems like some people have some ideas about how to fix chrysals but they are fairly extreme measures such as removing part of the belly and replacing it with a lam. I don't think supergluing will do anything, wrapping may or may not help. I'm not sure.

[Zion]

I'm thinking about laminating layers of titebond on the area so that at least the cracks are protected and not exposed. It seems that with hawthorn the chrysals start at areas where small knots are, and only when i heat bend the wood. Of the three hawthorn bows ive made 2 of them got chrysals while the other one was perfectly fine, and it was more green than these ones. I also didnt heat bend that one as intensely.

Still gotta figure this wood out.