Problems bending BL(tiller check)

[okie64]

Just wanderin if anyone else has had trouble bending black locust. I have heated this thing up 3 times with a heat gun and I cant get it to stay where I want it to. I bent it quite a bit past where it needed to be for the string to line up with the center of the handle and it keeps working its way back toward where it was before. I'm pretty sure I'm using enough heat( the belly is pretty dark brown now). May be that I'm just used to bending osage and this is nothing like that. Any tips are appreciated.

[bareshaft12]

put in some clamps an let cool down in the clamps.bl is by far osage. Ive made some bl bows

[George Tsoukalas]

How far from the center of the handle is the string? Jawge

[Elktracker]

If you are having trouble getting it to bend at the handle you could always bend a little a few inches from each tip to get it where you want it. As bareshaft said I always heat it up nice and slow to where I cant hold my hand on it for more than a second or two then clamp it and let it cool. I sometimes let it cool over night if im having trouble with it walking back to where it was. I also dont usually mind if the string is not centered in the grip as long as it favors the shooting side of the grip.


Josh

[okie64]

How far from the center of the handle is the string? Jawge

Its about an inch from the center of the handle. The handle is right in the middle of the wiggle you see in the middle of the bow. I laid it out so when I get the string over to the middle of the handle it should be almost centershot where the arrow rest will be(about an inch above that). I thought it was a good idea, maybe not?

[mikekeswick]

Use steam on black locust - it will work much better for this type of bending. Remember you are trying to bend a lot of wood there. I would steam it for 90mins and then clamp past where you want it and leave for 24 hrs.

[okie64]

Thanks for all the tips guys. I clamped it and heated it again tonight and I'll see what it looks like in the morning. Usually when I bend osage I clamp the handle in a vice and hang some weights on the limb while I heat it up and let it  bend on its own. Apparently that method doesnt work with bl.

[okie64]

The clamps and heat worked great. I got the string lined up really close to center on the handle. Now onto tillering. Thanks for the input from everyone.

[Lee Slikkers]

Good job Okie...I followed Mikes advice yesterday and steamed my current BL build for an hour & a 1/2 and clamped it to my caul.  It was wickedly twisted and had a heavy propeller twist, it all cam out great and I couldn't be more pleased. 

(Thanks for the advice Mike!)

[George Tsoukalas]

What's the problem? Looks like the string is on the handle. I'd make a bow. Jawge

[okie64]

Got a chance to work on this one a little bit and heres what I got so far. One limb has a big kink and some deflex goin into the kink so its kinda hard for me to judge so if you got any opinions let me hear em. I'm tryin to go mainly off of thickness taper and how it feels in the hand but its hard to not want to scrape some more wood around that kink to get it workin more. Its at 45# at 22" in these pics.

Heres the sideview profile of that limb.


Here it is on the tree with the kink on the right.

Kink on the left

[JonW]

Looks real close so far. It may be deceiving, but it looks like the limb with the kink has a flat spot between the kink and fade.
I would take some other opinions though.

[randman]

Great job on that tiller. Looks like it is bending equally on both limbs despite the wiggly spot. Got a few wiggly ones like that of my own. I'm learnin a lot on them. How to imagine a curve dividing the wiggly places down the middle matching the other limbs curve. Hopefully mine will come out as nice as yours.