Steam bending heat treated limbs?

[eastcreekarchery]

is this a bad idea since a heat treated belly might not want to stretch?

[gutpile]

humm... I don't heat treat till bow is almost finished on tilling... probably not a good idea you will lose all your heat treat if you steam now...gut

[Hamish]

Kiln dried wood is usually not suitable for steam bending, it snaps most of the time, or has a greatly reduced capacity to take and hold a bend. Heat treated wood is even more extreme than kiln dried. Sounds like a really bad idea to try and steam after a heat treat.

If you need to make a minor correction or add a little reflex, you'd have better luck with a heat gun. Wood can only take so much abuse though.

[PatM]

  A better question might be exactly why you need to do this.  What are you attempting to achieve?

[eastcreekarchery]

  A better question might be exactly why you need to do this.  What are you attempting to achieve?

im working on a bow experiment. I made a small bow to practice heat treating and it took a lot of set in the process. I wanted to reflex the tips to see how performance might improve. I was inspired by a paragraph in TBBI that said a reflex deflex design would work best for a selfbow efficiency wise.

[PatM]

That bow is already bending too much in the grip.  You would have to address that in your experiment.  You could always try a soaking and boil the tips to see if it can be done.   You might be sacrificing the bow though.  Not that this has to be a big deal.

[DC]

I found that heat treated yew doesn't like to take radical steam bends, like 70° recurves. It was way stiffer than untreated wood. I never broke one but I only tried it once and then I was chicken.

[Marc St Louis]

My experience is that it is not a good idea

[loefflerchuck]

One of the reasons heat treating helps a bow is by force-drying the wood. The moisture content in the in the wood should be too dry to bend with steam. It will break.