Dun a bad thing.

[Pete W]

     
 Well the bow I liked best from the ones I made took some set, actualy a lot of set,but it was even.
 It kept iritating me every time I strung it, so tonight I decided to fix it. After lots of time with the heat gun and clamps it now has about 2" reflex, just what I wanted.    
 Then I string it up and    
 The tiller has gone south big time.
 The top limb hss about an inch less tiller than the bottom. So now I have another project to work out. The solution is simple I guess, scrape till they are even,, work it up to 28" again, weigh it and add finish.
 I should have left well enough alone.  

[Pat B]

Pete, any time you heat wood you have to give it time to cool completely and rehydrate. Sounds to me like it was still too warm.
  Building bows is like cutting sideburns. You gotta know when to stop!!! d;^)

[Bowjunkie]

Sounds like it too a set for legit reasons. Learn from set/string follow... meaning learn what to do on following bows. When a bow takes too much set, it's mostly irreversable and trying to fix it will likely just make it worse. There's not much you're gonna do... except learn from it.

There are a couple of other options, options that MAY make them LOOK better/more acceptable to your critical eye, but even these proceedures can cause more set, or rob cast from the arrow in other ways, so end up a wash.

Usually it's best just to learn why it took the set, and make the necessary adjustments to your next bow.

[Art B]

That's pretty common after heat treating Pete. We're generally working with uneven limb properties and the limbs react differently to heat. And it's nothing serious. String up the bow, and choke up on the striffer limb and start pulling until you get both limbs even. But it you have heated one limb more that the other tnen you will have to do some scraping I expect.

Just to add, after getting both limbs even, let set at brace for an hour or so to bleed off a few pounds. Cause the bow will feel extra heavy at first which can fool you into taking off too much weight initially.

[okie64]

Pete, depending on how much heat you used and what kind of wood it is it needs to rehydrate for a little while before you string it up and try to work on it. Heat-treating wood takes moisture out and makes it much stronger in compression than it is at normal mc levels. I try to let mine sit for at least 3-4 days after I heat treat them to let the mc level climb back up to normal. Some woods can handle being dry without breaking like hickory but others not so much. Sounds like you dried one limb out a lot more than the other one so let it sit a few days inside the house and then string it back up and see what you got.

[fujimo]

so when is the correct time to heat treat a belly-
when the bow is completed, or still a few inches away from being completed???

[1025 vs]

I've heat treated quite a few birch bows successfully, and I do it once it's floor tillered. That way most of the dark colour gets scraped away during tillering but leaves the belly harder than it would have been otherwise. Birch is the only wood I have a lot of experience with, so take this with a grain of salt.    Rob

[Pete W]

It's fixed. Tiller is good at brace and at draw, and I actualy picked up a couple pounds in the process.I had to scrape 1 limb quite a lot, and of course went to far, LOL so had to finess the other one to match it. The reflex stayed in all is well.
   :D