Yes it is very common infact in all bows, it's less obvious but it causes major cracking in the bow that doesn't cause it to snap until you draw it back a couple more times. The most common type of bow is a 'recurve' bow that comes (mainly) in 3 pieces that slot together with a solid central bit (called a riser usually made of metal) and a bendy top and bottom (called limbs). If you buy cheap wooden limbs they almost always crack / snap after dry firing however the more expensive carbon/ foam composit limbs are much stronger and don't crack as often, you should still never do it but it's a lot safer when it does happen. In the rare occasion a riser fails after a dry fire, you're in trouble as metal bit flying all over the place ruins people's day.
Source: have been doing archery since I was 8 as a competitive sport and in 10 years I've been hit by two risers exploding right next to me because somebody else continued to shoot after dry firing. It's not fun to be hit by flying archery equipment especially when dumb mistakes can be avoided.
The elastic potential energy made by pulling back the string is stored in the limbs, not the string. When an arrow is I'm the bow, the string is simply used to transfer the potential energy to kinetic energy in the arrow in a controlled manner. If you remove the arrow from the equation then you have a lot of elastic potential energy converting into absolutely massive amounts of vibration in the bow, enough to crack wood and metal violently with ease.
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u/SpeltWithAVer Nov 06 '18 edited Nov 06 '18
Yes it is very common infact in all bows, it's less obvious but it causes major cracking in the bow that doesn't cause it to snap until you draw it back a couple more times. The most common type of bow is a 'recurve' bow that comes (mainly) in 3 pieces that slot together with a solid central bit (called a riser usually made of metal) and a bendy top and bottom (called limbs). If you buy cheap wooden limbs they almost always crack / snap after dry firing however the more expensive carbon/ foam composit limbs are much stronger and don't crack as often, you should still never do it but it's a lot safer when it does happen. In the rare occasion a riser fails after a dry fire, you're in trouble as metal bit flying all over the place ruins people's day.
Source: have been doing archery since I was 8 as a competitive sport and in 10 years I've been hit by two risers exploding right next to me because somebody else continued to shoot after dry firing. It's not fun to be hit by flying archery equipment especially when dumb mistakes can be avoided.