Ocean Spray question

[penderbender]

I  threw an off cut in the ocean and it sank. Cheers- Brendan

[penderbender]

Sorry to steal your thred Don. On Sunday I cut this os. It was about 3 1/2" dia and 77 1/2" long. It was growing about 2 degrees off of horizontal, about a foot off the ground. It split great. Here is the top side of it. 2" wide 1 5/8" thick and 75" long. I think there are two knots, one of which wont end up in the bow. Sealed the ends, left the bark. Let's see what we get. Cheers- Brendan

[DC]

Cool!

[Accipiter]

Seeing some awesome, big pieces of OS on this thread! My experience using larger diameter ocean spray is that it needs to be trapped substantially, or else it can chrysal. IMHO, its so tension strong that the high crown on smaller pieces is actually required for low set and no chrysaling. Had a beautiful clean 2 1/2" diameter (and rather flat-crowned even for that diameter) piece chrysal in both limbs during the final tiller. Don't want anyone else to have to repeat that tragedy! 

[DC]

Well, that's kind of disappointing to hear. I was hoping that a flatter back on OS would work into some kind of super bow What you're saying kind of means there is no point in hunting down large OS. Had you heat treated the belly on the one that chrysalled?

[Accipiter]

Ya, I hoped that too    It could definitely be issues with my tillering (and the high stress design), but the chrysalling was even in both limbs, so I'm not sure. I did heat treat right after floor tiller/recurving, and again later during tillering. I think my issue was that my limbs were very stable thickness, and I trapped at about the same angle for the whole length, which meant that the back:belly ratio was much lower at the tips than towards the handle. Next time I'll trap the inner limbs considerably more.

It was an awesome bow while it lasted though   

[willie]

I was hoping that a flatter back on OS would work into some kind of super bow

you could trap it, so to speak, with a flat full width backing of a not so stiff wood, and avoid the stress concentration on a pin knot.