Bought a bow with a little string follow

[Eric Krewson]

This isn't my first recovery job, it is pretty easy to do. Like I said I may add bamboo, I have bambooed two or three bows that were lost causes and made surprisingly good bows out of them.

[sleek]

I had a hickory bow take set bad before. So i just flipped it arpund, belly for back, and shot it till it took set that way, then flipped it again. It was neat, then i bamboo bellied it, made the bamboo the back, and it still shoots fine. Hickory is veraitile like that. Id bet it would look neat with bamboo running up the fades like that, and shot backwards. Its what i would do,  seeing as the back has no compression problems yet, and its nicely reflexed if you flip the bow around.

[turmoiler]

Yes, the bow has quite string follow but it is not destroyed. What I would do is to heat treat the belly to remove string follow and add a little bit of reflex then tiller it and see how it does. Nothing to lose a lot to learn

[Eric Krewson]

I reflexed one limb and toasted the belly, the picture shows the string follow limb on the right and reflexed limb on the left. I just heated the other limb and it is cooling now.

[Eric Krewson]

Toasted, I may work a little more near the fades, this bow is above 70# right now.

[turmoiler]

Good job! Now it's time to tiller and cross your fingers.
BUT DO NOT HURRY, heat treateing have made that the wood lost a lot of moisture, you have to wait, maybe even a pair of weeks. If you have access to a moisture meter it would be great, if moisture below 8% don't touch the wood, between 8 and 12 would be more or less ok though many people says hyckory benefits from low humidity. Meanwhile you can make another bow

[Eric Krewson]

I have a moisture meter, hickory can stand very low M/C, 6% is not to low. It is going rain for the next week so I suspect my hickory will rehydrate well. 

[turmoiler]

Way to go then

[Bayou Ben]

Wow.  So the difference between the string follow limb and the recently heat treated limb is about how much?  8, 10 inches?
I've never seen a bow with that much string follow. 

[Eric Krewson]

It was probably stung by an owner that knew nothing about selfbows and left strung its entire life.

I posted a thread about selfbow etiquette on the stickbow site, it was surprising how many guys had no idea on how to treat a selfbow.

[Woodely]

"this bow is above 70# right now"   whoa......   looks like you are saving that puppy,  be interesting to see the final outcome.

[Eric Krewson]

I put it aside for a few days, it has a suspect knot near the tip of one limb so I glued on one long tip overlay to cover it but haven't done the other end to match yet. I got side tracked building bamboo arrows from some shafts from china, these are really good shafts.

[JW_Halverson]

Ignore this comment, just putting a bookmark in here so I can find my way back later. I am going to want to follow this closely!

[Eric Krewson]

I am actually doing two recoveries, this one is an osage bow I made 20 years ago and was found in an abandoned storage locker. It may have been left strung for up to 20 years and had a piece of electric fence wire for a string. It was in the same condition as the above bow, today is crack filling day, lots of superglue.

[bradsmith2010]

Eric,  I like that word "recovery"  nice to bring those bows back to life,,