used dry heat to reshape my bow. pics. thoughts, suggestions.

[thomas74p]

so I took a little freindly advice and removed my bow from this crazy jig I made and then used my heat gun to heat it and reshape it. worked really well too! thanks for the tips guys. helped my get it more straight with the path of the string as well. heres some pics of my progress now. let me know what ya think and what I should do to help it more if needed. if this is good then I will move on to shaping the handle bettter and making some knocks. taking suggestions on those two areas as well, if I'm ready to move on to that point, that is. once again thanks a million for all the freindly advice.

[Badger]

100% better!

[Pappy]

Yep,thats more like it.
 Pappy

[thomas74p]

  whooooooosh, as he wipes the sweat from his brow. I was mentally preparing myself for less positive comments. really glad to hear I'm back on track.
now it's on to the handle and knocks then I'll see what it pulls and how even it is. once again, thanks guys.

[Pappy]

You need to cut the nocks and get it on a long string before you are ready to brace and start pulling on it,I assume you already kown that but just want to be sure.No time to get in a hurry now. Get the limbs bending evening floor tillering it and then to the long string,either stick or tiller board.
   Pappy

[DarkSoul]

Yes, that's more like it!
You want to start floor tillering before you spend too much time on the tips and handle. Judging by the state the stave is in, you need to establish the width lay out first. It is uniform in width at the moment, which was fine for heat corrections. Draw a centerline, lay out the width of the bow, reduce the bow to that line, and start floor tillering. You're nowhere near the point where you want to consider filing in string grooves.

[thomas74p]

I was thinking about reducing the width some and the thickness some also. sounds like ai should do width first. handle last. and a bunch of stuff in between.

[bubby]

can i ask for the width at the tips

[thomas74p]

right now, if I recall correctlly, they are 23mm. not good with inches when it comes to small things. so it's a little over an inch length is now 51 inches. I was thinking I should reduce width at the tips to 16mm as my thickness is 13mm.

[Carson (CMB)]

When you do get to the handle area, be sure to smooth out the width transition of those fades to handle.  The abrupt cut in you have now is a great place for a monster splinter to lift.   

[thomas74p]

like this?

[bubby]

So it looks to me that  the limbs fun parallel most of the length of the limbs?

[DarkSoul]

like this?

No, please, no. What kind of weird transitions are you trying to create? Just looks at some of the many hundreds of bows that get posted here and copy what you see everyone else do.
Make the handle width lay-out something like this:

(Credit to Osage Outlaw)

[thomas74p]

I thought that weird layout looked good. in my mind at least. but laying my arrow down I find it's gonna scrape my feathers too much and I think that may mess up my shot slow down the arrow  or knock the fletchings loose not to mention what it's gonna do to the turkey feathers themselves. probly get em all stringy lookin and I don't have any more right now to refletch. so inconclusion, I was right. I am was wrong. thanks for setting me straight, again. I like that pic up abouve. I'll just do my best to match those angles. that looks alot more like what my daddy use to do anyway. probly a reason he did that. obviouslly I didn't pay good enough attention to what he was saying back in the day.

[PEARL DRUMS]

You cant match that pic, you don't have a grip and cant have. You have to leave the width the same right through the handle. It CANT be narrower than your working limb if it does not have thickness to back it up, which you don't. Your bow will bend in the handle.