Broken cherry

[Sidewinder]

Well, it finally happened. I broke the first bow I had started and it was a hickory backed cherry. The board blank ws glued up and given to me by a friend in the obsession and I had started it about a month ago. I had a feeling it might be weak. I had gouged it on the side pretty good learning to reduce wood with the drawknife and the wood seemed real light and I thought it might be too dry, so I had set it aside after it was roughed out and reduced to bending and ready to go on the short string. I decided that I would start a hickory pyramid and use what I had learned roughing out the cherry. The whole thing right now has been becoming proficiant with the hand tools. I had made some mistakes with the cherry early on that I wanted to do over and have thus gotten better at on the hickory. I got the hickory to the point where it was ready to go on the short string and decided that I would go ahead and finish the tiller on the cherry as a practice run so I can get the hickory right. I'm glad I did. I had one limb that was a little flat in the midlimb and had just about worked it all out. It was supposed to be a 45#@26" 55" Hickory backed Cherry. I had been excersing it 15-20 times between scrape sessions( good little resistance work out) but had never pulled it beyond the 45# throught the tiller process.  I had it to 45@24" and decided to see what the weight was at 26" and POW, thar she blows. Made a big ole bang and the wife hollers from the front room on the other side of the wall " are you allright" and I'm stoked. I broke my first bow and I'm stoked. I new that I had overcome some good obsticals and have no regrets. I now have more confiedence than ever to finish up the hickory, however I don't think I will pull past the target weight again.  My tilleiring tree encapsolates the handle area and it performed well. Flying debris was contained to a minor blast area...lol I was going to try and post the pictures of it but I'm not sure how that works, so enough for now. Danny

[tom sawyer]

I read "...and the wife hollers from the front room..." and thought for a second you'd whacked her with some shrapnel.  Just as well, they tend not to forget things like that.

You learn some valuable lessons from broken bows.  Inspect the pieces and see if you can't determine exactly why it blew.  The autopsy is often a good learning experience.

[Bishop]

Danny, you got me all fired up about breaking my first one..lol...im glad you didnt get hit with any debris, i guess its kinda a right of passage.

Bishop

[Sidewinder]

Yeah, rites of passage. You said it so succinctly my friend. The shrapnel was minimal,  half of the right limb was slung from right to left in one large piece and it hit my stave pile. No harm done. I went out and scrapped on the hickory board a little while with the rasp and big file. I think once I get this one built I will take it down a little further with the draw knife before I go to the rasp. At least the rasps I have aren't "hogging" off wood. They do OK but it sure doesn't remove it on the hickory like it did with the dry cherry that just blew up. I probably stopped a little thick not wanting to get too deep and get a weak limb, but I'm thinking those limbs and that length/width dimension with this tough ole hickory could probably go down to 1/2". I went down to 5/8" and been scrapping from there and I'm sure I could have gone deeper with the drawknife, so next time I shall. I'm gonna guess and say my final depth of belly will finish at 7/16". So we shall see. Danny

[Gordon]

If you're serious about making wooden bows, you're going to break one now and then. Congratulations on your first!

[DanaM]

Gets the heart rate up there when they blow eh I stand well clear of tillering tree
I have a 10' rope on mine, it only took one whack on the head to get my attention

[George Tsoukalas]

Jawge says, "If you ain't breakin' you ain't makin'!" Jawge

[cowboy]

That will get your attention, and can hurt too......hehe.

[juniper junkie]

to get the full effect of the bow breakage, you will have one do it at full draw! that will rattle you.

[Minuteman]

Eeyup you can't get the full gut wracking affect of a blow up unless it is in your hand thats for certain!
 Just so ya know buddy ,I broke 6 Hik backed cherry bows last summer. Never did get one to stay together. Got one to full draw coupla times. Had one split down its length at full draw. Felt like someone had hit my hand with a hammer!
 Chris

[OldBow]

Sounds exactly the same story five years earlier when I broke my first bow.  Wood was bulletwood.