Red Oak "Hybrid" Bow

This is the second bow that I finished.  It is a red oak hybrid deflex/reflex bow.  It was sawn as two laminations and glued back together over a form to get the desired shape.  It is backed with two layers of drywall tape bedded in white glue.  I then cover the tape with cloth from Wally World.    The bow was 68" nock to nock and pulled 50 pounds at 28" of draw.

Putting the cloth backing on the bow.  Lots of clamps to hold the cloth down while the glue dries.

This is the first arrow from the bow.  It was shot at about halfdraw from 10 yards before the bow was finished.  I hope it is a good omen!!!

Oops!!  I guess not!!  Oh, well, It was a test bow anyway. The bow lasted for about 50 shots.  At about the 40 shot mark I heard a "tic" just as I reached full draw.  Several shots later I could see a small crack building along the limb that you can see broken in the photo.  I then filled the crack with epoxy and wrapped the limb with nylon cord.  I wrapped the other limb to match for appearance.  After the epoxy dried I continued to shoot the bow until it failed.  It failed just as I reached full draw and exploded.  The design for the bow is a good one but I made this bow about 4" too short.  It caused too much strain on the wood.

Here it is at full draw shortly after finishing but before the trouble started.