Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: jeffp51 on January 31, 2015, 02:34:40 am
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In my experience, nothing comes for free and everything in life is a compromise. I will accept that heat treating is beneficial to many woods, and it ups the draw weight and improves compression-weak wood. But what do you trade to get it? Does the stave become more brittle and prone to breaking?
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the brown color, sometimes.
As for anything else there's no trade off, except you overdo it, of course then the wood gets more brittle.
I think heat treating has done very very much for every serious bowyer, it really turns some bad staves into rocketlaunchers, especially osage and elm etc........ It saved many of my bows from to much set or little developing hinges etc..
And the best part is the loss of mass ( after retillering) and increase in drawweight, I mean that is my definition of the coolest thing you can do to a bow!!
hope it helps :)
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if you are not experienced or patient,, you can ruin your bow,, that is the main trade off,, trying to make a bow" better" is sometimes the enemy :)
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Like they said, color and the possibility of ruining the bow if you do it wrong. I burnt one to a crisp the first time I used coals.
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The main issue I have with it is how, as a busy dad with multiple jobs and ADHD, I ruin far too many promising bows by getting distracted and overcooking them (to a crisp) during the process. I use a hotplate and forms, and if I forget to set the timer, she's firewood.
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There are none! ;)
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So as long as it isn't overcooked, it's all positives? that is a rare occurrence, I would say. What happens if you scrape off the darkened wood? does the benefit remain in what is left, assuming that the heat was applied slow enough that the effects aren't just on the surface?
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Agree with mike. Barring operator error, no down side.
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the brown color, sometimes.
As for anything else there's no trade off, except you overdo it, of course then the wood gets more brittle.
I think heat treating has done very very much for every serious bowyer, it really turns some bad staves into rocketlaunchers, especially osage and elm etc........ It saved many of my bows from to much set or little developing hinges etc..
And the best part is the loss of mass ( after retillering) and increase in drawweight, I mean that is my definition of the coolest thing you can do to a bow!!
hope it helps :)
Did you just call osage and elm bad staves? Ohhhh boy your gonna get it now!
Honestly, osage responds to heat bending but not so much to tempering. It does but not like elm. Elm is good anyway but man alive it can become twice as strong with a good belly temper.
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The other cost of heat treating is the additional resources (including time) required to do it. It's been my experience that without a solid form, the bow will warp. Without a way of producing gentle, flame-less heat, it's too easy to scorch the stave. So you need additional stuff to heat treat, along with the time. But if you have that stuff and can afford to invest the time to do it right, then heat treating seems to have no drawbacks that I've found.
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Well, you do need to let the wood dehydrate. I have broken a bow afterwards from bracing it after a heat treat.
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I guess I figured that was part of the time investment that goes along with heat treating.
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don't get me wrong i mean if you have a bad stave of that woodtype.
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Well, you do need to let the wood dehydrate. I have broken a bow afterwards from bracing it after a heat treat.
Sleek, you mean "rehydrate"?
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Pay attention to what I meant to say, not what I said. Lol.
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Heat treatment makes the wood more brittle. For a belly thats rarely problematic unless you have an accidental dry fire at full draw like i had when the string of a just tillered bow slipped off.
Belly snapped to pieces...
Compression-weak, tension-strong woods benefit most, like elm, hickory, EHH, american hornbeam, sweet cherry, ...
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On the other hand, a molle I tillered to 30#@28" was overdrawn to ~30" and dry fired when my dummy of a cousin got his giant hands on it and the toasted belly didn't even take set. I don't let the bow sit for more than two hour past cool (on the form for best bend retention) before getting back to work-- but then I left one of my locusts in the Nevada sun for the week I was building it and it still shoots great and hasn't taken set up in Canada.
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I think that the heat treat is very beneficial. Early on I tried it over coals but it was too hard to be consistent, so I bought a heat gun, built a form and now were talking consistent. Its the only way I will do it now. I know osage does'nt need it as much as elm and others but I think it does help some. Its just more noticeable on some of the other woods the amazing transformation it produces.