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Heat treating demystified (Somewhat)

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BowEd:
Well put fellas.To conclude my end of thinking here.Wooden bow building to me is a process of problem solving a lot of times.You can't fix nothing without tools.Heat treating is a very valuable tool in the bag a bow maker has to get the best out of a piece of wood.Without it you would'nt see a lot of the beautiful bows shown on this forum.I think Marc St. Louis has investigated the process and the durability of it to the extent noone else has done.He stated many times how tension strong wood is best suited for heat treating.So it can keep in step with the bellys increased compression strength it gets from heat treating.If a bow fails for me because I heat treated it too many times I blame myself.

druid:
Great article lostarrow, thank you very much for posting.
Did you collected these datas or you copied it from somewhere? If it is yours, are those the things that you tried personally or from some other documents collected?

lostarrow:
Hey guys, I,m not so sure why some are getting defensive on the subject.This is presented as information to aid you should you decide to heat treat.No where in this post do I contradict the findings of Marc St.Louis ,but on the contrary support his findings with a little background info on wood cells . Knowing how something works will save you much time and aggravation. I Just reread the chapter that Marc wrote in TBB ,based on Pat's reply to see If I had somehow missed something, and as I recalled he simply stated the results of his experiments. No B.S. , no wild theories , just the facts. That's what earns Marc the respect he has achieved over the years. Thanks Marc ,for taking legend and making it fact! If it wasn't for Marc we wouldn't have this tool in our bag of tricks. It may have been lost for eons until someone stumbled onto it again.

Bead man ,the point you made just once again supports the info here and as presented by Marc.

Jimmy, heat treating shouldn't shorten the life of the bow if done correctly. It will end it immediately if done wrong. That's why I posted this, to hopefully save someone the heartache of breaking what could have been a good bow.

Pat M , I try to present things in a way that is easy to understand, so I will not be going into the complex world of lignins,cellulose,antibiotics, minerals and the effects of heat thereon. Yes ,heat affects all of these ,but as they are in unknown quantities for  any given species in various regions and growing conditions ,we shall overlook them . The more important point I was trying to make is that once those cells have shrunk ,they hold less water. Water is the main ingredient in flexibility(for our purposes).Desirable to some extent on the back, but can be detrimental on the belly.(increased set and sluggish cast).

Druid, I present only the info that I have gained from over twenty five years of cabinet and furnituremaking. Some from college ,much more from hands on experience.Over the years ,I have learned from many skilled artisans and learned more from people that decided to throw centuries of knowledge to the wind to increase production, only to have it all bite them in the butt when things started to fall appart. I have studied traditional ways of craftsmanship in many fields and found that much info can be transferred from one trade to another. Timber Frame construction to Furniture,Boat building to timberframing, Stained glass to Cabinetmaking, and so on.Some info comes from High school science class,(teacher  didn't like that I asked so many questions,but I needed to know why,or the info didn't stick)and some I can't recall where I learned it , because I use it every day.Like trying to remember how you learned to walk or talk.Bow building is just my latest obsession.The above is what I believe happened to that piece of "tree of heaven" . too much heat for a tension weak wood.Low sugar content meant much more heat to "toast " it . by the time that happened,it was over cooked, and cause a tension failure.

Please , if anyone finds anything I post to be in error, feel free to quote the statement and present your argument for the contrary. I'm only human and am not offended by being proven wrong. Humbled perhaps, but not offended. When we stop learning , we die.

SLIMBOB:
  I for one enjoyed reading your post.  I, like you and many others enjoy the pursuit of knowledge for it's own sake.  It's how I roll.  I see the same quality in my 7 year old boy.  I need to know the whys and hows of a particular problem in order to fully understand it.  I at least need to be able to question the whys and hows.  Not taking sides here so much as acknowledging that, at least for me, your post was informative and interesting.  Not sure about your facts (not that I question them, I just don't know their validity yet) but a worthwhile read.  Thanks.

Marc St Louis:
There was quite a bit of controversy on this subject when I first started to post my findings and moisture loss was at the top of the list as an explanation.  One person in particular, I believe his name is Lennie, did some testing at the time using fairly precise instruments to measure the moisture loss from heat-treating, he measured the wood before heat-treating and after.  He found that the actual moisture loss was less than 2%, not a very large amount.  It was concluded at the time that moisture loss was NOT an explanation for the increased compression resistance from heat-treating.

All of these old posts were on the old PA message board and I wish we could have access to it.  There is a huge volume of interesting posts and information sitting out there somewhere

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