First self bow (BL stave from Wizardgoat)

[Treebeard]

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

[Danzn Bar]

Welcome to PA .... great place to spend some time.

Sorry,  don't have any experience with BL.

Again Welcome,
DBar

[wizardgoat]

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

[TRACY]

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

[bubby]

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

[PEARL DRUMS]

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.

[Treebeard]

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

[huisme]

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.

[Treebeard]

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.

[Puckaway]

looks really good from here!

[Arrowind]

WELCOME!  looking good!

[Treebeard]

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.

[Drewster]

GEEZ, that bow LOOKS snappy.  Sweet curves too.  Looking forward to seeing the finished product.

[Sidewinder]

Man the full draws looks pretty good. Hows the unbraced looked being that short?

[Treebeard]

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.