All you bowyers that build wood bows, how many have you broke or failures in regards to set or otherwise.
I have 6 hanging on the wall, broke probably 8 and 4-5 bad attempts at design. ie. excessive set, hinges etc.... experiments gone wrong.
In the last few years failures are less based on experience, goes with the territory.
Recently saw a picture of my first bow & laughed out loud. It honestly thought that it looked good at the time.
In a few more years, I'm sure that will happen again.
Hmmm. I've had a few "failed attempts". Never really counted. I build mostly backed bows so I don't have too many out right breaks. Most of my failures come in the form of abandoned bows. I'm quick to jump ship and start over if I detect a problem. I'm normally excited to try something new in the hopes that it makes a spectacular bow and the second I notice an imperfection I lose my enthusiasm, so I move on to something else. I would say I have 15 or so of those attempts laying around. I'll salvage risers and tip overlays, but anything more than that and I don't consider it worth my time.
I got one for ya..... Check out my 1st R/D bow...
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How that thing survived I have no idea! I still shoot this bow sometimes. It's the smoothest drawing bow I have. Took like 3" of set.
I'm squirming in my seat looking at the picture right now.
I had a couple failures early on mainly because I was to afraid to use my good staves and started with crappy wood I had 1 osage bow delaminate between the rings could never figured that one out but started using the better wood got better results Im sure there are failures around the corner ,part of the wood bow game but things progresevly got better I learned a lot from failures !
I had some broken attempts, mostly with board bows.... One, really pretty walnut, with hickory backing about hit me on the head.... lol
Only have 4 successful bows so far. Came in close to target weight, shoot decent have tradgang approved tiller.. first 4 or 5 attempts came in waaaaaaayyy under weight, one design flaw and I'm to scared to string that one again. Only had one to blow up so far. All my bows except the last were red oak boards from Lowes. The last was a hickory stave/board turned out really good. Working a real stave now. May never work a lowes board again unless its a SHTF situation.
Interesting topic, would love to see this go on a while.
I haven't broken very may bows in the making stage, 3 or 4 breaks but at least that many badly hinged out of 156 bows so far. Most failures were cause by me getting in a hurry, a few by a poor stave choice.
The other end of this question is how may failed somewhere down the road, blew up, popped a splinter and such. Most of my failures in this realm were from 1 to 5 years after the bow was made. My guess would be 10% for general after market failures.
I have a failure rate of about 100% for bows shot heavily for over 5 years with between 100K and 250K shots put through them by customers, all eventually popped a splinter. Osage is great stuff but it does have its limits.
Can relate to lots of stuff here, rushing the build was a big one for me at the beginning.
Building the handle section, having a shelf and a good fade transition into a one piece bow is at least 80% of the work for me. Having said that I have 2 risers its just a matter of building 2 equal limbs, less work and I can build multiple limbs of different lengths and weight.
First 3-piece I built had 2 sets of limbs, one set broke the other is still good having over 1500 shots 3 years later.
I would be more than happy with 100k shots on a wooden bow. I had no idea they would last that long! That's a lot of shooting
Eric that's an impressive record IMO. Ive often wondered how often our ancestors wood bows would have lasted. Strung for extended periods, drug all over creation in search of game in all weather conditions so on and so on.
Never broke one.
A bunch. Made a bunch too.
One friend who ran a sporting goods store stopped every day at a shooting range on his way home from work and shot around 125 arrows give or take a few. His osage bow popped a splinter after 5+ years.
I did a conservative calculation of the number of arrows he put through the bow and came up with a little over 200K. I have several bows out there that had close to that number when they went.
Eric how many self bows have you got that many shots on? I know you build alot of boo backed stuff. Most of my breaks after the first 20 bows made was a result of sketchy materials. I'm rarely surprised when one breaks now, I can almost predict based on the stave.
I built wood bows for over 10 years before I had one break. Many were badly bent but none broke. The ones that have broken since were my fault and not the fault of the bow or wood.