Il Bastardo es Muerto!

We went over to Now Strike archery near Chelmsford to test some warbows with heavy "standard" and "military"arrows and to give il Bastardo another try out with 28" flight arrows.
The heavy arrows flew well from JT's regular bows, and we could see which bow performed best, shooting those warmed him up for il Bastardo.
He flexed it a bit them pulled it back... I thought... Wow, that's coming back a long..BANG!
Previously he'd been an inch maybe and inch and a half short of full draw, but this time he was really getting into it. The bang was huge and it brought over the other archers from the adjacent field to see what had exploded.
It had a short but worthwhile life having won last year's Mary Rose flight shoot. It will be much missed by family and friends.
At least we have time before the next shoot to shorten and re-tiller some other bows for flight use. I'm also going to make a Hickory backed Yew so we can find which shoots best.

As it exploded it took JT's head clean off his shoulders, but we put his head back on, and having found the bow string, put one loop over his ear and threaded the string down under one armpit round behind his shoulders up under the other armpit and tied it off round the other ear. By the time he'd had a pint of Guinness and we'd shared a bowl of chips his head was growing back on nicely.

But seriously ... fortunately no one was hurt, and it could have been a lot worse... I could have been shooting it! ;-)

I've kept the pieces so I can take some measurements, as I think it was pretty much optimum..... but for a 27" draw!
It looks like the break propagated from the upper limb, but it's a very high quality break ;-) as it has smashed pretty evenly along the whole bow.

I expect JT is currently sitting in a darkened room with a large glass of red wine :-)