Heard a big CRACK sound but see nothing

[PaulN/KS]

Sorry to hear that it is the bow and not the patch or glue Rich...

[Little John]

Sorry it did not work out, but am sure you learned lots and can move on to a better one. Been there and done that, now you just need to make more shavings.  Kenneth

[George Tsoukalas]

It is good that you learned something from the bow. Jawge

[Pappy]

Sorry about your luck but if you learned I guess it is worth it,Like Gordon said a crack noise is almost never good,you can almost bet you are going to have a bigger problem.Sinew will make a noise sometime but somehow it is different.If you hear that tink noise while on the tiller board or tree
you better look close and hard and figure out what it is, cause you got trouble.It is a noise
selfbows builders really hate to hear.  You just got to get back on the horse and ride.
    Pappy

[Ryan_Gill_HuntPrimitive]

maybe im the dare devil here but....  i would glue the sliver down and wrap it with sinew and shoot it. i have had 2 bows break from splinters  lifting...and i mean break.  one lifted at the  tip and split all the way to the handle.  a little titebond, and several sinew wraps and 24 hours later. good as new.  i have hunted with it, shot tournament in the rain! and target shot it.  never had another problem.  thats been 2 years ago and probably 500 or more shots through it.    but just be careful- Ryan

[richpierce]

Thanks all for advice and encouragement.  I learned a couple of things from this bow (my third) which had worm hole defects and imperfect tiller, too.  Because it was very dense osage with thick rings, great late to early wood ratio, I thought I could get away with imperfect tiller.  Wrong.  I should have kept working it and accepted a lower draw weight.  It had all kinds of prop twist and undulations.  So I learned a lot about straightening wood.

I may go ahead and glue it, XL sinew patch it, and give it a full sinew wrap-around and fix the tiller and see if I can get it to hold together at 45# or so.  It will be a bow with a story, but maybe not one I'd hunt deer with.

I don't want to get too sentimental with it.  I'm finishing another osage bow with a nice deflex/reflex profile.  It's a ridiculously small piece of wood, maximum 1 and 3/8" wide, bend through handle, 50" nock to nock.  Right now it's at 60 pounds at 26" pull.  I'll get some pix and post.  Seems harder to shoot accurately than a long bow but is really zippy. 

And I'm finishing my first hickory bow with a stiff handle, 1 and 3/4" wide at fades, gently flipped tips, 68" nock to nock, and drawing 50# at 28".  This one is a shooter.  I stuck a punky branch about and inch and a half in diameter in the ground on a hillside and took my first shots from 15 yards and busted that branch all to pieces with my new cane arrows.  That made me a happy camper.