Black Locust Bow Repair

[RandyN]

Made my first Black Locust (BL) bow from a stave.  I overbuilt the bow due to reading that BL has a tendency to follow the string and crystal on the belly.  It's 70” NTN and 1.5” wide at the fades.  Parallel limbs to mid limb then tapper to the tips.  It's about 2” wide around the knot.  The stave was a bit of a challenge.  One limb has a deflexed area about 4” toward the mid limb from the fade. The other limb has a knot hole, about 1/2" hole, that travels at a 45 degree angle thru the limb.  Finished the bow to 53 lbs at 28”.  The tiller looked off because of the 2 trouble areas.  The bow was smooth drawing, has no hand shock and shot were I was looking. After a couple months of shooting, it lifted a splinter, well maybe a little larger than a splinter, in the center of the back.  The good news is it didn't blow up.

[RandyN]

Before and after pis of the damaged area.  Onto the fix.  I superglued the splinter back down.  I used 3 small c-clamps to hold the splinter down until it dried.  After drying, I strung the bow to see what the brace looked like and to see if the splinter would hold.  It did but I was worried about drawing it to 28” to see if it would hold.  Decided to back the bow with rawhide.

[RandyN]

Pic of the rawhide in place.  This might look like no other rawhide you have ever seen.  Its from a mule deer a friend of mine harvested a couple years ago when I took them hunting.  They didn't want the hide so I took it.  I left the hair on the hide.  Laid it out in the NM sun with salt on the flesh side and let it dry.  After drying, cut it into strips.  When I'm ready to use a strip, I cut the hair off, soak it in water until it is soft and put it on the bow. 

[RandyN]

Pic of the bow now pulling 52 lbs at 29”.  With the rawhide on the bow, I decided to fix the tiller.  I evened it up a bit and pulled it to 29”.  The bow shoots a wide spin range of arrows.  Really likes a 768 grain hickory arrow that is 30” long.  But shoots arrow that are 65-70 spine cut to 26”.

[RandyN]

Don't give up on your bows that develop a problem.The beauty of wood is you can fix them, re-work, and sometimes save them.  They might even shoot better than before the problem.

[Allyn T]

Awesome bow, good save

[Pat B]

First, BL is quite strong in tension so unless the back was damaged somehow, scraped too thin, violated, etc. it shouldn't have lifted a splinter. The rawhide and super glue is a good repair for this problem. The right limb, with the knot looks very good, the left looks like a possible hinge right off the fade, stiff at the fade, hinge then a pretty good bend after that. Overall, nice work.

[bradsmith2010]

nice save,, do you have unbraced photo, that always helps me appreciate the tiller,,

[RandyN]

Thank you for looking.

Pat B,,I may have confused the limb profile by only posting a pic of the bow at full draw on the tillering tree. There does appear to be a hinge in the limb when at full draw. But that is the limb with the deflex.  Here are a couple profile pics of both limbs.  2 pics of the limb with the deflex and the other of the limb with the knot. I hope the pics help show what I had to work with.

[Pat B]

Well, I think you nailed it. Well done.

[Del the cat]

Yup, gotta love a good save.

Del

[George Tsoukalas]

Looks great. Well done!