Author Topic: Heat bending tamarind?  (Read 1208 times)

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Offline Ryan Jacob

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Heat bending tamarind?
« on: July 11, 2017, 05:31:18 am »
So I'm new to this site and I have a roughed out tamarind bow in the works. It's about 57 inches ntn and has some lateral bend. One side I can remove the bend through tillering but the other one is going to need to be heatbent, any tips P.S. the woods pretty hard to heat bend (like guava and yes I've broken one trying) :)

Offline Hamish

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Re: Heat bending tamarind?
« Reply #1 on: July 12, 2017, 07:45:15 pm »
Never tried to bend tamarind, but if it were me I would use steam rather than dry heat to get the bend, as its a bit more forgiving. I would also use a form with a reflex, and side support for the lateral bend. Leave it clamped at least a day.

It can be really tricky with some of the less used but excellent bow woods(eg Guava), as there isn't as much info on how they behave with heat bending. If you have  a decent sized scrap of tamarind you could do a practice run and see how it behaves.

Offline Ryan Jacob

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Re: Heat bending tamarind?
« Reply #2 on: July 14, 2017, 10:36:50 pm »
I already bent it a bit with dry heat and I might try to steam bend the rest of the bend straight. Thanks!