Strange defect on plum bow - what happened?

[Frodolf]

Hi guys!

The other day I finished this plum bow. 65,5" ntn, 40#/27", 2" reflex, 1,5" from fades, moose antler overlays, total mass around 19,5 ounces. This was my first time making a bow from plum, and the wood impressed me a lot. Not only is it absolutely gorgeous, it took very little set, and the difference between "real" and "rested" set is very small. I pulled the bow some 450 times to full draw and shot several dozens of arrows with the bow, and it shot beautifully.

Then yesterday I strung it up and started pulling it a little to get it started when I heard the dreaded "tick". I looked very closely for splinters but couldn't find any. Eventually I did find a spot on the lower limb, about 2/3's down the limb, with a series of short, strange looking cracks running across the limb. It looks really strange, it really is a spot, as if it's a rotten spot. But scraping and sanding the spot, it doesn't feel rotten. It has a slightly different coloration than the rest of the limb.

So what's going on? Anyone experienced this sort of thing before with plum or other woods? Is the bow dead or is there still some hope? What do you say? Thankful for any help or advise!

[loon]

I don't know how people even tolerate using photobucket, it's so slow... but yeah, it's not working. Use imgur

[Frodolf]

Got it! 

[PatM]

Sounds like a spot that just started to decay before drying arrested it.  It doesn't take much for the  wood cells to start to be degraded.

[BowEd]

I would love a plum bow and maybe someone more familiar with that wood can comment but possibly rawhide or thick sturgeon hide could help???Not sure.I'm sure someone might suggest super glue and a sinew wrap but not sure on that either doing the trick.I see it's recurved some.One of those things to try and see what happens.Good luck.It's a beautiful bow and hope you get it fixed.
Thinking on this some more...Bow "fix it's" are generally the same besides changing the profile completely for less stress to every kind of wood and my suggestion would be to put a long tapered flax layer 4 to 5 inches over it of a strong 1/32" thick even 1/16" at the fretted spot and then rawhide over the whole bow and over the flax bandage too.

[Frodolf]

[Limbit]

I'd just fill it with superglue and clean it up with a gentle sanding. If you are really concerned, soak it in cyano superglue, make a bind on it with thin thread or sinew and be sure to put a mirror bind on the opposite limb to balance the tiller if you see the bind effecting it. It seems like it is willing to lift a splinter if pushed too far, so a binding will keep it down and operational. Just bind as tightly as possible when laying the thread. You can soak the thread in titebond after if you are concerned about it moving. The aboriginals where I live regularly do something like this and it can patch together some seriously violated bows and make them usable....even beautiful if you do some color designs with the thread. Rawhide or sturgeon would probably help as well, but definitely soak the area in some glue of some sort first.