Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: Treebeard on January 01, 2015, 04:26:34 pm
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Good day gentlemen,
Long time lurker, first time poster here. This post, while also testing the waters for advice, will hopefully serve as an introduction.
I recieved a nice black locust stave in trade from member Wizardgoat (credit where due), have roughed it out and am about to clamp it to a caul for further drying. Caul is an elliptical reflexed profile which should impart about 4" reflex (on the caul - I expect some springback). My question is; should I heat treat now to get a nice, smooth reflex and wait until weight stabilises to tiller, or should I wait until moisture (measured by weight difference) stabilises and then heat treat?
The stave has a bit of twist (30 degrees in one limb) which I'd like to try to correct sooner than later and, to my way of thinking, heating it now will give it a better chance of holding the corrections.
I'll admit I'm entertaining the thought of flipping the tips after it seasons on the caul for a while. If I heat treat now, am I limiting myself down the line?
Thanks for reading,
Nat
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Welcome to PA .... great place to spend some time.
Sorry, don't have any experience with BL.
Again Welcome,
DBar
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good to finally see you posting, im curious to see what people say.
id say you probably want to keep her strapped to the caul and maybe use wedges to try to get some of the twist out.
dry heat on wet wood is never good. keep her strapped and forget about it for a few weeks.
i just tillered out a BL bow from the same tree today.
i started with 2" of reflex (green on the caul like yours), and its pretty much lost it all now.
im thinking i'll heat treat it tommorow
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Once the stave is dry then I would steam and clamp bl to the caul. I've dry heated BL and it will respond, but IMO BL does much better with steam. Have clamps ready and you should have no problem taking twist out and adding reflex in one shot. I don't make a hundred bows a year but this is what works for me and BL.
Welcome aboard
Tracy
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Is this your first build? If so i think 4" of reflex is a little ambitious to say the least, but if thats what you have go for it and go slow as bl locust will show the slightest tillering mistakes with cryshals, good luck
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A lot depends on how long ago it was cut. Id suggest letting it dry an adequate amount of time and then Id heat treat and shape all at the same time, twist is never a problem to get out. I use steam for one thing, static recurves. 4" on the caul will equate to about 2.5-3" off the caul. Not too bad.
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Thanks for all the replies.
I suppose the title of my post is a bit misleading. This is the first bow I've made from a stave. My previous efforts have been either bamboo backed sugar maple (that's where I learned what a chrysal looks like), or R/D bamboo backed ipé per the design and process on the poor folk bows site (with a few procedural modifications).
I have the stave clamped to my form and seasoning in the basement. It seems I miscalculated some when I made the caul; I made it to put 4" of reflex on a 65" stave and realized my stave is only 62", so it wound up being more like 3 3/8" of reflex on the caul.
I guess the plan is to wait for the weight to plateau some and then heat out any defects prior to tillering. I'm going to lay up another ipé/bamboo blank and work on that for a while to keep my mind off the temptation to take the BL stave to the tillering tree too early.
Thanks again for the advice.
Nat
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I'd keep it in the caul until it's dry, correct twist with steam, then set the bends and heat treat at the same time with dry heat. Steam gets the best bends from locust imo, but dry hearing things has always helped them stick for me.
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So, at last I have the stave bending. She's sitting at 50" ntn (had to shorten it up due to a "recurving mishap"), presently pulling 55lbs at 25". I'm going to take some shots of it in my hands at full draw tomorrow when I have some light and see how she bends before heat treating and finishing.
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looks really good from here!
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WELCOME! looking good!
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Thank you Puckaway and arrowind for your kind words. I did a bit of tuning and got it to about 55# at 27". It has about 1/4" of positive tiller and I may be cheating a bit, but I threw a few arrows and it's snappy as all get-out.
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GEEZ, that bow LOOKS snappy. Sweet curves too. Looking forward to seeing the finished product.
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Man the full draws looks pretty good. Hows the unbraced looked being that short?
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Thanks Drewster and Sidewinder, I heat treated after this pic, so I'm going to wait a week or so before I brace it again. For the sake of interest, I had to put another peg in my string making jig because there wasn't one to make a string this short.
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Looks awesome!! Id like to see it unstrung!
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great work
Del
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Nice tiller, looks quite powerful.
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Welcome to PA! Thats a sweet first bow!
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Beautiful looking bow, that full draw looks sweet!
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Beautiful bow
I'd like to see unstrung and frontal pict !
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Sweet! Looks like you are getting a great bend out of it. Nice work. (I also can't wait to see more pics!)
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Looking good, I too would like to see unbraced picture. I have always heat treated my bows at floor tiller before being pulled quite that far though.
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Here's an unbraced picture. I'm going to come clean and admit this pic was taken after I reclamped it to my form and heat treated it. It had taken about an inch and a half of set during tillering, so I heated it into the profile you see here. I'm going to let it rest until the weekend before I brace it again. In the mean time, I'm going to sand and start finishing, apply tip overlays and cut and form the leather grip.
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Nice work Nathan. Will be interesting to see if any of that reflex stays. Even if you lose some I doubt it'll go back to where it was prior to heat treating
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Fingers crossed! Thanks again for all the help.
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Looking good ;)
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Oooh!! I love the curves on that bow man!!
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Real nice work on that shorty, that full draw looks good. One suggestion if its Ok, you may want to wait on the finishing until you string it and check the tiller again. Sometimes the heat treating changes things a bit and you may want to do a little scraping again on the belly to either adjust the draw weight back down or fine tune any tiller changes the heating may have caused.
Looks smooth and fast though and I'm impressed with the amount of bend you got out of a 50"'er. :)
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+1 Mr. Bent.
Even with a bit of string follow that thing is a beauty, great use of a short piece of locust. No chrysalis, I'm assuming? The bend looks clean enough to deter frets, which would keep the locust as snappy as possible-- combined with well-narrowed tips I'd expect this thing to spit arrows like a champ ;)
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Thanks everyone for the kind words and encouragement. I strung and braced her today and found the tiller to be pretty close to where she was before heat treating (lower limb had stiffened a bit more than the upper). Gained about five pounds of draw which I brought back down with some judicious scraping. She draws 56# @27" now and shoots like a dream (so far. It's pouring rain here right now so I had to settle for shooting in the garage). The unbraced pic is immediately after unstringing and shows 1 1/4" of set which relaxes to 3/4" after about 15 minutes. No chrysals thus far, but I suppose I really need to shoot her in before I can say for sure. Thanks again for all the kind words and advice.
Nat
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+1 Mr. Bent.
:laugh: Ha... :laugh: does that make you feel old Greg..... >:D ;) :) coming from a young guy like huisme
By the way very nice looking shorty.....I'm going to try one of those some day.
DBar
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Wow! Full draw, full weight recurved shorty for a first self bow, pretty damn nice work!
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Looks great ! Just un braced pic looks very acceptable
Tracy
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Nice work. You got a great bend out of that one!
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That's exactly how that bow should look, you pulled it out of the stave just right ;) ;D
Make another one >:D
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Thanks everyone for the kind words.
Had a fun afternoon shooting arrows with Ryan, his wife and a few of their friends.
Since finishing, I've put about 150+ arrows through her and she's showing no frets and takes about an inch and a quarter of set.
Got some much needed photography tips, so here she is;
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Turned out good Nathan, that was a fun shoot
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First selfbow?! Wow can't wait to see your second. Good work man!
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That's grip is sick man...really dig it. The bow ain't bad either :). Grear job on your first one!
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That is astounding execution in both design and tiller for your first from a stave.
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You all are far too kind. Thanks again for the kind words. Special thanks are owed to Ryan for not only the stave itself, but also the extensive guidance and tillering advice. I'm sure you're sick of my texts by now. Just wait until that yew stave is dry. You'll never hear the end of me then >:D
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I'm impressed. Even with Ryan's tutoring, that's still a heck of a nice job for your first stave bow. Keep it going. We'll be watching for the second one.