[buzz lite beer]

Originally Posted by Dougal

So anybody who has had a string break at full draw COULD expect their limbs to break? How many people in that instance would put those limbs to one side, and buy another set?

As already said, my technical knowledge is sparse so forgive me....when you release the string , the arrow tip moves directly forward, not sideways , not rattling about.The string prevents the limb tip from moving upwards out of the limb pocket as its attached to the bottom limb, doing the same job there.
Without the string to restrict its forward movement, the limb tip will continue to travel at speed away from the riser.Whether the limbs leave the pockets is don to the depth of the pockets.As the limb leaves the pocket, its under very little stress sideways, most of it is backwards and forwards.

I say it again, my limb has broken across the thickest part, where the bolt is.I assume its the thickest part in order to deal with the stresses it suffers, and equally, I would have assumed that the weakest bit, and therefore the bit most likely to break, would be somewhere else.

No one would expect there limbs to break after a string snap, and Border on many occasion have pulled there limbs so far back that the string has come off the limb tips as part of there R&D and repeated it with the same pair of limbs to ensure failures are minimised with production models, what I was saying is that the point at which the damage had occurred to your limbs (I saw the photos that Murray posted for you) is directly at the point the limbs are retained with no string on to keep them seated securely so all forces would be concentrated at this one place with no arrow or string to absorb the energy imparted on them, it would be naive of you to think that these limbs would just come out of the dovetail area in a perfect straight line without making contact with the sides of dovetail slot in there journey down the hall hence my rattled out reference, the area of breakage may well be the thickest part of the limb in cross section but there is a 8mm hole drilled through this point that should be considered.