Pin knots in osage

[osageknot316]

Hi Everyone,
I wanted to get your opinion on how best to prevent issues with pin knots in osage. I have had to discard several of my osage bows due to horizontal cracking right on the pin knot. Would it be better to leave a couple growth rings right around the knot? Thanks!

[Pat B]

What I do with any knots, pins or otherwise is add a drop of super glue to pins and saturate knots, back and belly. I don't think leaving an island of the previous ring on the back will help and in some cases it might lift a splinter. Keep an eye on the pins and add more glue as needed but otherwise I have no other advise. You should however be sure you haven't violated the ring around the pin.

[osageknot316]

I'll try that next time. Thanks for the help I really appreciate it.

[Hamish]

If you are getting cracks across pin knots you aren't leaving enough wood around them to compensate for the weakness.
Some people ignore them and manage to get away with it. Maybe the bow is a little longer or wider than otherwise ideal, other times its shear luck of the draw.

Never had a bow fail, or degrade due to a knot if the problem was addressed whilst laying out the dimensions, before stock removal.

If the bow at a certain point has a knot, you compensate at that point extra wood around the width, at least to the same dimension as the knot.

[Eric Krewson]

Something else is going on, I may get the start of a tiny crack over a pin, like Pat I superglue the crack, I have never had a crack travel beyond the actual pin. I am very cautious about wood removal and ring chasing around a pin, the ring usually thins to the thickness of paper and is tedious to chase over a pin. I made small scraper out of a concrete nail to carefully chase the grain around a pin, of course I call it a pin knot scraper.

Do you live in an area with wet and then extra dry conditions?  Were your staves completely dry when you made a bow out of them? And mostly, is your tillering spot on with no weak or stiff spots in your limbs?





Pins don't cause me a problem, even ones on the edge of a limb, it is all about how you handle them.





 

[osageknot316]

Eric Krewson thanks for the reply! I live in Windsor (across the river from Detroit) and I order my wood from Pine Hollow Longbows. The tiller on my bow looks pretty even and I removed wood slowly around the knots. Regardless I had a horizontal crack appear on a small pin knot and it only got bigger the more I bent the bow. I should also mention the knot was in a high stress part of the bow on the lower limb.

[Hamish]

Did you leave extra width around the knot though?

[Jim Davis]

Note that the wood fibers don't stop at a knot. They go around. leave those circumnavigating fibers alone and you'll have no trouble.

[bassman211]

Yep .... you need to be careful around clustered pin knots. I have had splinters lift there, because I wasn't careful enough.