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
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.
