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Short staves- draw length and draw weight trade off - Finished with pics
superdav95:
Yao could have saved you some trouble going down the rabbit hole of gas burners. Too bad. They didn’t work well for me either. The only things that ended up working for me was a good heat gun which take a lot of time even if you build a holder, and a hot coal bed. The coal bed is the best in my opinion to get a thorough cook. You will benefit from protecting your back with a heat resistant material like insulation or insulating foil perhaps. I used a roll of pink insulation layer out on sticky foil tape that worked. I’ve since moved to roxul the green stuff held in a strip with foil tape and then weight that down as is cooks. I find it doesn’t send glass fiber floaties around in the air like the pink stuff does. Anyway some thing to consider for next time. I also don’t heat treat woods like western or eastern cedars or junipers or yew really. At least not the same as we would with white woods. If doing corrections in twist or alignment fixes use steam. It will make the corrections more safe and drastically reduce your splinter lifts or breaks if done right. Overheating can cause wood to become too brittle and snap. White woods generally take more heat better the other woods even Osage. So long as you take measures to avoid too much wrap around heat effect on the stave white woods can tolerate a lot. I’ve got many hhb, hickory, elm and others in white wood category that have taken darker then normal heat cook over coals and been great shooters. Even bamboo is a great candidate for heat treatment. I know a lot of guys don’t do this but for me I’ve found some noticeable benefit from doing it. If using bamboo for backing only heat treatment on the non rind side. Especially for backing. If using a bamboo backed and bellied bow then there is benefit to doing a treatment on the compression belly side boo only. Some of my fastest bow have been these ones. Anyway lots of info here on the forum. Do some searches I’m sure you’ll see some good examples to give you a good reference. Message me directly too if you like. superdav95@gmail.com
sleek:
--- Quote from: jameswoodmot on January 12, 2026, 07:34:50 pm ---Sleek, I've got 57" of Wych Elm cut, 1 1/2" at the handle and 1 1/4" at the tips for now, i will potentially have 3" or so of flipped stiff tip. Do you need more info for your calculations?
We'll see how it does but what i'll probaby do if im patient enough is to tiller it to 18" or so and then start taking chrono reading. IF im patient and dillegent enough i think the arrow speed will start to plateau before its starts to drop? Im going to heat treat it though so as I scrape through the heat treated wood and then potentially re heat treat it that might render the reults inaccurate as far as future bows?
If it doesnt seem to be able to take the bend early on i'll sinew it as you suggest Supedav as a practice for that little yew stave.
Selfbowman, i've got plenty of long staves, I just fancy making a short bow
Thanks for all the input everyone, im starting to get my head round this wood bending! certaily is complex
--- End quote ---
I need to know the dimensions of the working ( bending section) limb so I can calculate its surface area. For example, the bow is 1.5 at the fades, and 1 inch mid limb, tapering evenly to .5 where the tips get stiff, and the limb from fade to where the tip stops bending is 27 inches.
jameswoodmot:
I’ll get back to you both properly in the near future.
For now, we have a resurrection 😎
jameswoodmot:
--- Quote from: superdav95 on January 13, 2026, 06:06:52 pm ---Yao could have saved you some trouble going down the rabbit hole of gas burners. Too bad. They didn’t work well for me either. The only things that ended up working for me was a good heat gun which take a lot of time even if you build a holder, and a hot coal bed. The coal bed is the best in my opinion to get a thorough cook. You will benefit from protecting your back with a heat resistant material like insulation or insulating foil perhaps. I used a roll of pink insulation layer out on sticky foil tape that worked. I’ve since moved to roxul the green stuff held in a strip with foil tape and then weight that down as is cooks. I find it doesn’t send glass fiber floaties around in the air like the pink stuff does. Anyway some thing to consider for next time. I also don’t heat treat woods like western or eastern cedars or junipers or yew really. At least not the same as we would with white woods. If doing corrections in twist or alignment fixes use steam. It will make the corrections more safe and drastically reduce your splinter lifts or breaks if done right. Overheating can cause wood to become too brittle and snap. White woods generally take more heat better the other woods even Osage. So long as you take measures to avoid too much wrap around heat effect on the stave white woods can tolerate a lot. I’ve got many hhb, hickory, elm and others in white wood category that have taken darker then normal heat cook over coals and been great shooters. Even bamboo is a great candidate for heat treatment. I know a lot of guys don’t do this but for me I’ve found some noticeable benefit from doing it. If using bamboo for backing only heat treatment on the non rind side. Especially for backing. If using a bamboo backed and bellied bow then there is benefit to doing a treatment on the compression belly side boo only. Some of my fastest bow have been these ones. Anyway lots of info here on the forum. Do some searches I’m sure you’ll see some good examples to give you a good reference. Message me directly too if you like. superdav95@gmail.com
--- End quote ---
fantastic, Thanks for all tha info! I had no doubt i was not the only one to try gas burners but i couldnt find any info anywhere, its good to know you had the same issues as myself.
I have also found coals to be vastly superior as a heat source but I am limited on outdoor space and can only do one limb at a time so it becomes a bit of a pain. The next bows i do ill go back to coals.
great tip on the insulation board, i use a lot of small diameter staves as so there is always a big gap where the heat can get around, i'll try some insulation next time!
Im planning on keeping the burner and seeing if i can get an isualted box built to contain the heat and use it as a kiln for heat treating belly lams. I've roasted wood in the oven for appearences and its quite eaxy to get a consitant through colour. would be great to do a 40" piece that could be used for belly billets.
So the orginal bow turn out to be a wild sucess, after laminating with the black locust i got a great little bow. It was pulling 35lbs at 25" and shooting 316 grain arrows at about 161fps average which i was well happy with.
i tillered it almost symmetrical, not realising how much the tiller would change in the hand. I videoed myself shooting it and realised that i needed to weaken the top limb, it ended up being 32 ish lbs at 26" which is great as thats a full draw bow for me.
It had a bit of a twist after glue up and somehow the whole thing ended up bent but not twisted after tillering. No idea what happened there but it dictated to me which side to shoot off.
I barely took the bandsaw marks out of the centre, i didnt realise how much thickness was needed in the middle. The thickness taper caught me out a bit too, ive never made a bow with such wide tips, in hindsite its obvious but i ended up thinning the backing a lot on the outer thirds.
got it painted up with oil paints now so ill have to wait a month or so to shoot it again.
jameswoodmot:
The second bow was a great success, im dead pleased with it.
That wonky stave i posted earlier strightened up great with dry heat and loads of clamps and wedges. I have it a hot air gun heat treatment/ reflex bend with the slats clamped to the side like Del does. Getting it bending nicely before stringing I cut through a lot of the heat treatment so i gave it a second going over.
Again, even though i cut this one thicker, i still didnt have enough wood in the middle. Both these bows too set in the centre quarter so I need to remember to keep them really thick in the middle.
I couldnt get on top of my tiller on this one soon enough to take any reading of arrow speed at shorter draw lenghts. It was a bit seat of the pants and I got it to behave just as i was reaching 25". i was planning for 45 ish at 24" but it ended up 40 at 25" which is completely fine. It took a bit more set than the last one but its a couple of inches shorter and pulling quite a bit more so again, no biggie. After hald hours shooting it comes back with its tips inline and half- 3/4" reovered in half hour or so. I really liked shooting this bow but i gave it away already!
Its interesting how quickly i went from turning my nose up at these bows becasue i thought they were inelegant and didnt like the design because of the wide tips and straight lines, to them being two of my favourite bows ive made! Books by coveres, eh?
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