Too much reflex

[DC]

I posted this a while back. Now I'm going to try and do something about it. This bow had about two inches of reflex when I finished it. It gained another 3 or 4 just hanging on the rack. Sorry about the blurry picture but you can see the reflex. In this picture I tried to steam the right limb. You can see it's a little straighter. After I had steamed it I thought of maybe another way to straighten it a bit. I'm thinking of putting it on my pegboard and bending it maybe to brace height and just leaving it for a month or so. So I can steam it, dry heat it or stress it on the peg board. Which do you think will give me the best bow in the end?

[Ricardovanleeuwen]

Wouldnt store it turned 180 degrees be the best since It got the reflex that way

[DC]

It wasn't the stored position that caused the reflex. Yew branches seem to have a tendency to move around as they cure more.

[willie]

 Yew branches??

are they are like other confir branches,  high in lignin content?

I have found lignin rich wood to be slow drying but easy to bend with steam heat, and also like to eventually return to original shape. never tried to "set" the correction with dry heat, but I have a drying box that stays at 100F. ( it has a single florescent shoplite fixture with 2 T12 bulbs). maybe  keep it in something like that for a few months strapped to a form?

[DC]

That may be what's happening Willie. The branches are very dense, they could be lignin rich. They seem to take 2-3 years to stabilise. I gave them one year which is usually enough for a split Yew stave. The heat box idea sounds good but I hate to build a box like that for one bow. I do have a warm box but I don't use it any more and it just gets up to about 70°f. All my wood is well dried and I'm not getting any more.

[Jim Davis]

The lignin, (all wood has some) is what becomes pliable  with heat. Got to  get it above 150F. Get it hot and make it bend, keep it bent while it cools.

It does need to be hot all the way through.

[bownarra]

None of the abvoe!
Heat treat it into less reflex.

[sleek]

None of the abvoe!
Heat treat it into less reflex.

^ What this guy said. Put it on a form that has the amount of reflex you want, and heat treat the bow on it. You cook those cells good with a heat gun, they won't stretch and shrink anymore. Of course, you will need to retiller afterwards to drop some weight.

[DC]

Very strange thing. I steamed the other limb to balance them out a bit. Then I bent it on the peg board to brace height and left it for a couple of hours. When I took it off it was down to about 3" of reflex. Still quite a bit but I could brace it. before it just had too much reflex and would just roll over in my hand. It wasn't necessarily too heavy, just cumbersome. Any I put it on the tree to see how much weight I was going to have to remove and it's 38#@28". Very surprised because there is a lot of wood there. Mid limb  it's .700" thick and 1.3" wide. Anyway it's usable now, we'll see if the reflex comes back. In all this heating, steaming and whatnot the string alignment never changed. I've never had that happen before.

[scp]

I would be measuring the weight of the bow everyday and before and after steaming. IMHO it might be easier and safer to deflex the fade area using steam, instead of trying to reduce the reflex near the tips.

[DC]

That's what I did.

[Ricardovanleeuwen]

All my wood is well dried and I'm not getting any more.

I always  tell that my self too but i stopper believing that

[DC]

Yeah but you're probably not 73 Actually I did save some Viburnum I cut in the front yard so I guess I lied

[simson]

If you like less reflex, I would suggest to reduce by heating  (deflexing) the handle

[Santanasaur]

I like simsons  idea. Recently I tried deflexing a handle by cutting a kerf on the belly side and steam bending there. Then I put another lamination on top so it won’t break if you went it backwards. I’m not sure whose idea that was but I think I saw it here.