Heat correcting twist in recurves...

[Cloudfeather]

I'm currently making a, soon to be, rawhide backed osage. It's 60" ttt and will have a mollie style build to it. I normally get a wee bit of twist while recurving the tips, this one seemed to twist quite a bit more. Any tips on how to fix this? Thanks in advance.

[toomanyknots]

Best way to do it is to overcompensate before hand, I have the same problem as you with my recurves alot of the time. What you do is, make sure you leave a good amount of extra width so that you can just remove the excess to get a good alignment friendly recurve after bending incase they twist or go to the side.

EDIT: Also, for your problem at hand, I suggest googling heat bending or heat correction, and I am sure you will find some good info. I personally can't help much in that department.

[Utmostcone]

I'v never done this but from what I understand, maybe just heating it up enough so you could twist it the other way would work?

[Cloudfeather]

I can generally carve out the twist. I think I can clamp it to my bench and heat bend it enough to get it to where it's livable.

[Pat B]

Generally when I'm making a recurve I have to adjust the tips a few times. I also leave the tips wide and I can make adjustments by situating the tips by removing wood from one or both sides.
  Have you rawhide backed the bow yet? What glue did you use?

[Cloudfeather]

No, I haven't backed it yet. I haven't done rawhide before but, with sinew backing, I get the tips recurved how I like and then add the backing. I'm going to be using TBIII. It's done me good for snake skin, sinew, etc. I think I'll stick with it.

[Cloudfeather]

I think I found the ticket. Stuck one tip in the vice, heated it up and pushed it until it realigned itself. Easy deal, the tiny bit of crook/twist left will easily be carved out. Thanks for the info fellas.