Straightening tonkin cane

[GregB]

I've been straightening some tonkin cane down in my basement the last few days...late start at getting some arrows for hunting season. Yesterday I was working on the third one of the afternoon and it was a booger! It had more nodes then most of the others and was pretty curvey. I had spent a lot more time on it then normal and was thinking..."be my luck that I'll break it when almost finished". Well, while on the last node I felt it give although it didn't come apart in two pieces in my hand I knew it was a goner. Went ahead and snapped it into and called it an evening!

I've been using my heat gun on this batch, where last year I used a one burner stove. I like the heat gun much better...just lightly clamp it in a vise.

[DanaM]

I do the same with the heat gun Greg, I also cull shafts like that right from the get go, no sense wasting time on them eh

[recurve shooter]

i had a few like that. man there is ALOT of time that go's into makeing these suckers, but man i love doing it. 

[Hillbilly]

Greg, tonkin is harder to straighten than most cane, seems like, a bit more brittle. I use the heat-gun-in-a-vise method a lot for straightening shafts, too.

[Josh]

Huh... Never thought about using my vice OR my heat gun...  Usually use a lit can of Sterno cooking fuel and just sit outside and hand straighten them over the open flame.  That's with river cane though never straightened tonkin before... 

[DanaM]

Josh nice thing about a heat gun is you can confine the heat to small areas or you can heat a whole internode section.
Another trick I was taught for straighening a node is to wrap a wet rag around the shaft on each side of the node to be straightened
this keeps the heat in the node and allows it be gently straighened.

[GregB]

I use the heat-gun-in-a-vise method a lot for straightening shafts, too.

Hillbilly, I think I first heard it from you about using the heat gun. BigA was working on a batch prior to my starting and was using a heat gun and liked it a lot better so I decided you guys had to be on to something...

Another trick I was taught for straighening a node is to wrap a wet rag around the shaft on each side of the node to be straightened this keeps the heat in the node and allows it be gently straighened.

That sounds like a good idea Dana! I usually jump around on the shaft to allow the cane time to cool before I do an adjacent node, but I have noticed that I've undone some straightening by getting heat on it again when I didn't mean too!

[DanaM]

Greg I hope the fella that told me that trick doesn't shun me for passing it along

[ricktrojanowski]

Greg
I found that when I was using my heat gun for straightening tonkin,  I was getting it too hot.  Which in turn was causing me to ruin lots of shafts.  A friend told me to use lower heat for longer and work on one section at a time then move to the next shaft and so on.  It takes me a ton of time but I ruin a lot less stuff.

[D. Tiller]

Yep! I hear you all. Been there done that. Working with, believe it or not, gooseberry as a shafting material. If I let it dry long enough, its prety tough stuff. Need to use for shaft and footing inserts though. Now if I can just get some time to work on my archery stuff some more! Never enough time or energy!

David T