Bow Injuries

[gfugal]

Some of you mention a pully system. That sounds interesting. Do you have pictures of how it works?

[osage outlaw]

[bushboy]

I broke many board bows when I first started.tagged myself on the man tenders a few times at first brace using the step through method!lol!punched myself in the face couple of times,mostly with maple bows because they go off like a bomb!worst injury was when a arrow shaft let go and pounced splinters into my bow hand.

[Pat B]

I went for many years without ever breaking a bow...many were badly bent but then all of a sudden I had a rash of breaks. Some were pretty spectacular, others pretty mundane. None created personal injuries. I think the only injuries I ever got while building wood bows was to my ego.

[Badger]

  Most of the bows I have had break were board bows. I have been hit several times but no injuries beyond a scrape or a bruise. I do however see the danger as a serious concern when it comes to eye injuries. I have had some hits pretty close to my eye that were hard enough to damage the eye. Closest I came to a serious eye injury was using a wrong method to brace a bow and I pulled the bow back into my face somehow. I have no idea how I did it anymore but it scared me.

[mikekeswick]

That reminds me of a man I saw at the local 3D club with a beauty of a black eye, he did it stringing a recurve with the push pull method.

[wizardgoat]

Like a few have stated, I mostly tiller my bows on a pulley system until the last couple inches,
so by the time it's in my hand I have high confidence in it.
They day will come when I blow one up, but that day hasn't happened yet (knock on wood)

[dragonman]

well I got the worst story so far,.... a couple of years ago a shooting friend of mine introduced a russian guy he met  to archery, so he got himself a bow , but he  was too lazy to make arrows and too tight to buy them, so he bought these cheap fibre glass arrows, he was warned that the spine was too low and they where too weak for his bow, but he went ahead and used them...anyway  one broke on release... half the arrow turned around and blinded him in one eye......pretty bad luck..
 Unseen damage to arrows is what scares me most.

I did get jabbed hard in the chest by a sharp piece of bamboo, when a bow dramaticaly exploded whilst trying to string for the first time with a stringer...luckily I have an ice cold workshop and I  had plenty of clothes on, if I had been in a teeshirt....would have hurt a lot more and bled too.

[Marc St Louis]

I've had quite a few explode at full draw including a 100# Yew warbow.  Nothing serious, yet.

[DavidV]

I had two bows break on me in succession this year with one leaving a nice bruise and the other drawing blood when it smacked my forehead. The only lasting damage is a bad case of target panic.

I'm also a little paranoid of the push-pull method because it puts your face a little too close to the blast radius.

[Jim Davis]

I had two bows break on me in succession this year with one leaving a nice bruise and the other drawing blood when it smacked my forehead. The only lasting damage is a bad case of target panic.

I'm also a little paranoid of the push-pull method because it puts your face a little too close to the blast radius.

OK, if a bow breaks during stringing...but how could it, if it's been tillered to full draw?

But when using the push pull method, there is NO reason to have one's face anywhere near any part of the bow. And speaking to a comment above, the push-pull was never meant to be used on recurves.

[Pappy]

I have broke my fair share, some shooting , some tillering but nothing more than a scratch or bruise , main serious injury I have gotten was my feelings, they got hurt pretty bad a few times. Heck I like living on the edge.
 Pappy

[Del the cat]

I have broke my fair share, some shooting , some tillering but nothing more than a scratch or bruise , main serious injury I have gotten was my feelings, they got hurt pretty bad a few times. Heck I like living on the edge.
 Pappy

+1 
Del

[Onebowonder]

Do you count "brokenheartedness" as a Bow Injury?  "...how about damaged pride"?  "...injured ego"?

I generally don't talk about the ones I manage to break, 'cause I'm supposedly a bowyer.  Surely that means I know what I'm doing and don't make such mistakes as might cause a bow to blowup in my hands, ...right?

Well a few months ago my young nephew and I were working on a glue up tri-lam bow, (ERC belly, Hickory backing, and thin lam of dark brown Walnut for a core/power lam).  It came off of the caul just as pretty as could be the next day.  We checked it all over for any issues with the glue lines and found none.  So we shaped the blank down to the rough profile we'd intended to use.  It had a good 5 - 6 inches of glued in reflex and was a 71" tip to tip.  It looked really good at that point.  So, we decided to take it back to long string shallow brace.  My nephew was able to pull it back to about 18-20 on the long string, so we figured it was ready for the standard brace height.  It felt pretty heavy, but not too bad.  Well - as RJ went to put on the short string, he exercised the limbs just a bit with floor tillering, and BLAMMO!  ...the whole lower limb just exploded.  Post destruction autopsy revealed that there was a flaw in the Red cedar on the belly at just the point where it had blown up.  A really smallish knot, but it was punky inside of it and so it folded under compression.  The only injury was caused when my nephew and I banged heads together as we reflexively jumped back from the explosion!  This one was just traumatic because it had seemed to be going our way for a goodly while. 

RJ was not deterred however, he reached over and grabbed another scrap of Osage and started making a kids bow while our heads still smarted from the collision!

OneBow

[PEARL DRUMS]

No injuries that could be seen, but I've been bopped in the head a few times. Your arms usually take the brunt of a breaking bow. Broken bows is why my shot has deteriorated to nothing. I short draw and snap shoot horribly.