George,
Is that really enough weight to have a effect?? I know I had to really put my back into some twists to get them out. I like the concept though....
Brian
It's actually better to make the correction using LESS weight. If you use sufficient weight you can undo the twist without any heat....but then it springs right back. When you have enough heat to make the wood pliable it won't take more than a few lbs of weight on a 10-12 inch lever to make the correction. And that is the correction that stays corrected.
Jawge, I was doing this trick back when you needed to have a PA subscription number to access this forum. I used a Jorgenson wood clamp and a 5 gallon bucket of sand on the floor. I would tie a rope to the clamp handle, pass it thru the handle of the bucket, pull it back up and tie it again to the clamp handle. Somewhere along the line I realized 80 lbs of sand in a bucket was bloody overkill! My next technique was to clamp the bow with the limb to be corrected hanging out over the bench. Attach the same Jorgenson clamp with a short piece of rope and that selfsame 5 gallon bucket. I'd drop a couple lead ingots in the bucket and start heating. When the bucket started slowly dropping I would slow down the heating process until I had the amount of correction I wanted. Shut off the heatgun and go get a cup of coffee.
Call it convergent evolution. After all, archeology shows that the bow showed up on different continents at about the same time.
Then again, PatB was younger back then and I heard he got around a lot more when he was younger. And we all know his penchant for teaching people to build bows. MIght also explain the yeti/sasquatch legends that exist all over the planet!