Selfbow Help, Should I heat the limb?

[bigcountry]

Ok, so I built my first Osage bow.  I shot it about 100 times.  And I am having trouble finding an arrow that doesn't contact the handle.  If I hold the bow one way, the string is way too close to my arm and I get string burn easy, and turned upside down, it so far past off center, I get alot of contact.  So I have two options.  One, heat the limb and twist or heat at the handle and twist, or reshape the handle so when I hold it either way its equal and no string burn.  

I am looking for advise, humbly, I have never heated a osage bow, and little leary of it.

Take a look.  This is looking down braced.  Basically it takes and "S" shape, but if I reshape the handle, all nocks line up with the handle.

 

[bigcountry]

Here's another of the belly view.  You can see if I twist the limb I am holding, to the right, it will be fairly straight bow.

 

[bigcountry]

Here's a back view.  Again if I twist this top limb, it should be in line with the bottom one.    

[bigcountry]

Ok, last one.  This is unbraced.

 

[bigcountry]

You can see the handle is pretty well inline with the bottom limb.

 

[bigcountry]

If I hold the bow one way, the string hits my arm.

 

[bigcountry]

If I turn it the other way, string is too far over and I get arrow contact.

 

[matt g meyers]

Well the first selfbow i ever made i smiled the whole time,even after the great tiller explosion.  But on the second bow i smiled even bigger.Fact is, now looking back at those bows I see a lot of flaws or things I've since learned to do differently,so maybe dont rush that piece and use your new skills on a different stave.Somebody smart said "The only way to learn is to make shaveings" and hey if you can have fun while doing that life is pretty good!

[bigcountry]

The guy who taught the class on making this said that also.  Not sure if he was trying to tell me the bow didn't turn out well or what.  So Matt, you don't think I should try to heat it and take out the twist?

[pine nut]

You can try or keep it like it is. Which would you rather do?  Which way gains more in your mind.  I think I'd go down swinging  as in trying, because it isn't working for you now is it?  If you try and it blows (2 things) 1. You gained experience.  2. You lost the bow that wasn't performing.  If you try and it works better: You gained experience, you gained a bow of which to really be proud, and you lost nothing!  Hope this helps. I would go for it. and I think you can do it.  It may take a combination of steaming the handle and the limbs.  Good luck!

[Osagetree]

Looks like you got some prop twist, but the slight curve in the upper limb makes it more pronounced. I would dry heat the upper limb and try to take out some of the twist. Restring it to see how that did. If it is still not good take out some of the curve on the limb in the next heating attempt.
If you use steam let it set a couple days afterwards and before stringing or shooting it to let some moistier dry up in the wood.
Take your time with it and I see that bow as shoootable.

[Eric Krewson]

Piece of cake to correct if you have a heatgun.

I use my vise and a bending post to correct sideways bends. I adjust my vise to hold the stave against the post, heat the area that needs correcting hot enough that I can't hold my hand on it for more than a few seconds and add shims to bend the wood to the side. The limb opposite the area to be bent gives me a lot of leverage to make the correction.

 

 

The post also supports my stave when I am doing some serious rasping and well as being a good support for a limb I am removing propeler twist from.

[Osagetree]

Alright Eric! He might teach us both something here!

[George Tsoukalas]

I wouldn't heat it. I would flip it around and shoot a lighter spined arrow if needed. Jawge

[Osagetree]

That is what I like about the selfbow building, more than one way to skin a cat. Good point George!

[Eric Krewson]

Osage is really easy to bend and a string down the middle of the handle is the mark of a well made bow.

It took me 4 days to turn the billets in the picture from a doglegged, severely propelered pair to what you see in the vise. Easy to do, just go slow and make multiple corrections instead of trying to do it all at one time.

[shamus]

I don't like to heat tillered limbs. My best success has been heating the parts of the bow that do not bend (tips/handle), or heating the limbs before tillering.

In this case, I'd either flip it as George suggested, or I'd heat the handle and bend it inline.

For bending the handle, I used a block of wood cut like this: ]

Place the bow in the ] form, and use a 8" c-clamp and crank it until the the handle is bent where you need it..

   bending wood with heat.

[Eric Krewson]

Made lots of osage bows, heated almost all until I was satisfied with them. 100 arrows out of an osage bow is still way below a finished, broke in bow, now is the time to correct it.

While we are on the subject of heat correcting and my handy little work bench post. Here is how I use it for removing propeller. This step is best done while the stave is full width as the pipe wrench will eat up the stave a bit no matter how much you pad it.

I heat the propellered area and add weight to the bucket. I often put 2 25# bags of lead shot in the bucket as well as as many heavy C clamps as it takes to untwist the limb.

You can see my heat gun holster in this picture. I made it out of a piece of aluminum angle. Sure is handy when you have a red hot heat gun and need to set it down while you are adjusting a hot limb. Before I made the holster I melted several power cords and burned my fingers on a regular basis by having a hot gun laying loose on my workbench.

     

Here is a close up of the heat gun holster.

 

[George Tsoukalas]

Eric, very nice. Jawge

[Eric Krewson]

OOPS! made one error in my "staged" picture. Always correct proppeller with the staves belly up. This way if the limb droops you will gain a little reflex. With the back facing up you will add unwanted deflex during your correction.