How long do heat strips last?? ugh

[T Folts]

I have a set of heat strips that have 4 sets of limbs on them and the one I keep on the bottom will not heat up as high as the bottom one.
I take good care of them and I cant see why it would crap out on me so soon.
Anyone have a issue with one not heating thae same?

[Jason Kendall]

I did on my first set many years ago, sent them back and I havent had an issue with the last set. I probably have 350+ bows on this set.

Is anything pinched on the end of your form? I radiused the form ends where they extend out past, if they get pinched they are toast.

[T Folts]

No they are not pinched, I also radiused my ends and support the remainder that sticks out so they dont bend.

[rkmnt2]

Even a Mercedes can break down occasionally.

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Hey Terry,

I have had several heaters crap out on me and every one of them has been due to not extending my pressure strips both top and bottom outside of the form, or letting the excesses flop down.

I have been working on coming up with a protective layer to use over these heaters that is flexible enough for our forms, but add more protection.

I sent a an email to the manufacture after hearing of your failure and this was his response.
please send that heater into the address i gave you.

"Kirk
In the process of improving designs and getting the permission to offer a warranty on non warranty items it tends to take time.
What you are seeing is nothing different than what has always happened on bow press heaters.  You are selling to an individual user market in which case no two presses are the same.  Even on your units for your personal use the fracture is indicative of the tooling used, not the heater.  I will see where management is at on issuing warranty heaters.  Each heater is 100% inspected upon receiving them.  If at any time there is a failure caused by the heater not the user or the tooling we don’t question it and issue the warranty heater.  In cases where the heater is not the issue we are required to send the inspection results up the chain and they will determine what I am able to do.  I will contact them and get back to you later today as they let me know.
 

Quincy"

[JamesV]

If you have the room build a heat box. Bulky but reliable and cheap to operate. The heat box can be used to dry hickory or bamboo or to just story your lams in.

[T Folts]

It very well could be what I am doing. I run my pressure strips to the end of my form and the bottom is rounded off as to not make a pinch point, however that may not be good enough. It would be cool if we (bowyers) could have a better guide as how to use them as it pertains to our use. Maybe someone who has made alot of bows on one set of heaters could post pics of the forms both for one piece and takedown (upclose) to show what has been sucessful. I had on my earlier (per heaters) form the pressure strip sticking out of the form but the hose put a big bend in them so I cut them off and rounded everything up thinking I was improving things, who knows eeh.