Stave advice needed.

[JWMALONE]

Guys this is hop hornbeam, going to work it into a native American style. I got it as straight as its gonna go. Question is how do you guys go about working the wavy areas? I tried to flatten them out worked a little but not much.

[Swampman]

Calipers can be real handy in those wavy areas to ensure and even thickness taper. As long as you keep the thickness taper even, you should be fine.  It is easy to have those wavy areas too strong and get a hinge coming out of it. 

[JWMALONE]

Cool, I got calipers. Thanks Swampman.

[Springbuck]

  I second the calipers.  Front to back wiggles play hell on my tillering eye, so I work toward making the thickness and thickness TAPER as exact as I can.  To me this means leaving the sides kind of squared up until toward the end, so you can see the thickness by looking down each side, and lots of using calipers.   

[Pat B]

Getting a good bend can be difficult to see. I squint my eyes while the bow is on the tree to eliminate the details and get a better overall view of the bend.

[Springbuck]

  Oh, and flip it often.

[burchett.donald]

JW,
       Do you have a caul...A 50% over correction usually works out pretty straight...After you reach floor tiller you can easily get that left bend out...
       1" left of center would be over corrected by a .5" right of center + heat...I can post pics if needed...
                                                                                                                                                 Don

[DC]

I found calipers to be a little cumbersome so I came up with this. Put the limb in the jaws and hold the handles in your most sensitive hand. I multiplies the thickness changes by 3 or 4 and makes them easy to pick out. I find I'm using it more and more. it's about a foot long.

[JWMALONE]

Thanks guys.
Pat, I haven't squinted my eyes since I was a teenager. LOL
Don, I tried that, it keeps coming back. Figured I try it again once I removed a little more wood. The side to side bend don't bother me, its the tight waves that are getting me. Its starting to bend a little better. Ill keep at it.

[Springbuck]

  That's all you do.  It's always hard for me not to make mistakes on stuff like this.  You know, just like flattening the belly to much on a roller coaster and ending up with one side of the limb too thin....

  Another thing easier to handle than calipers is two steel brackets, say 3" long. Take one, put bolts through the holes at each end, and add a stack of washers for spacers to each bolt.  Put the other bracket on and thread on some nuts.  Now you have a little rectangular spanner you can slide over the limb to look for thick and thin spots, and which you can tilt to follow the surface of the back.  As you progress you can take out washers to vary the width of the span.   Not so good with knotty staves.

[Swampman]

JW, these are the calipers i use to get an even taper. These are easy to use for this purpose.

[hoosierf]

Don’t worry about making it too precise at this stage.  Just scribe a line on both edges following the contour of the back leaving yourself an 1/8” extra everywhere and start working it down. You’ll be surprised what reveals itself.