Main Discussion Area > Bows
Heat treating by radiation
Santanasaur:
There are flexible heating elements and coils available for fairly cheap online. I’ve been fixing to wire one up for a while now but got caught up tinkering with a light kiln. I have a couple styles on the way, I’ll play around with them hopefully this week and see if I can get a design going.
DC:
I searched and all I can find so far in flexible are silicone(not hot enough) or elements that are flexible once before you heat it up. Once they've been heated they're rigid. The wire coils from the common heater work well if you can find insulators to support them. Then I need some kind of support that can be adjusted to varying curves to match the bows limb. It has to take the heat. Also since we're kind of limited to 1500 watts(15 amp breakers) a reflector to concentrate the heat is nice but then it also has to flex. Any ideas.
Simk- do the radiant heaters put out more heat than the conventional wire coil or is there a lot of hype involved :D
DC:
I crossed my mind that you could put a straight limb under the heat and poised over the caul. When it was all cooked you could just quickly clamp it to the caul and let it cool. I sort of tried this once with less than stellar results but I was heating with a gun so the whole limb wasn't hot.
simk:
DC: I'm no scientist nor have I any special education...On wikipedia I can read the following about quartz infrared heaters: Electrically-heated infrared heaters radiate up to 86% of their input as radiant energy. Nearly all the electrical energy input is converted into infrared radiant heat in the filament and directed onto the target by reflectors. Some heat energy is removed from the heating element by conduction or convection, which may be no loss at all for some designs where all of the electrical energy is desired in the heated space, or may be considered a loss, in situations where only the radiative heat transfer is desired or productive. For practical applications, the efficiency of the infrared heater depends on matching the emitted wavelength and the absorption spectrum of the material to be heated.
Finally I just tried this one and it worked well for a proper heat treating in a relativly short time. Still I think also your oldschool conventional wire coil should do the job. What results did you get?
Practically I think it's easy to put the bow loosley on the caul then just heat it up with a good distance until it's hot enough to finally force it proper on the caul (stage one). Once fixed on the caul in the final position you closen the radiator and do the actual heat treating.
My actual r/d shown first was steamed onto the caul in the steaming bag - didn't have the radiator at this stage...I always put them loosley on the caul start steaming and after a while start clamping until i'm on the final form.
I did not claim a miracle all in one device processor but it's imho better than my old heat gun. Still curious with what santanasaur and shannon will come up then ;D I'm happy with my little progress at the time. cheers
Stickhead:
Well, I’m relieved. When I saw this post’s title, I was expecting to see a home-made nuclear reactor!
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