Boiling staves

[Aaron H]

Somebody inform me in the pros and cons of boiling wood, mainly osage and yew. How long should I wait to let it dry afterwards?  The staves are already seasoned.  I am building a trough out of 8" pipe now, I hope I didn't jump the gun. I guess I could always weld a rack inside of it and only partially fill with water to steam it instead.

[bushboy]

I would be vary about subjecting any part of the working back to any form of heat.

[Pat B]

Yew and osage both manipulate well with dry hear or steam. On seasoned staves I'd use dry heat.

[Aaron H]

But you wouldn't recommend boiling?

[Pat B]

I've never boiled a stave so I don't know the effects on the wood. I've only steamed a few staves long ago. I may steam my next recurves to see if I can get a better bend without cracks. Most of my bending and straightening is done with dry heat and oil.

[bubby]

falcon I steam all my recurves

[Aaron H]

steaming seems to be the general consensus

[Blaflair2]

I steam for recurves and dry heat for other corrections, run crisco on the limb before steaming it and it protects the wood in my mind

[SLIMBOB]

It's been years ago, but tipi stuff and I put together a rig for boiling our bow blanks. The results were less than desirable on the few we tried. Dried the wood out badly. Anywhere the stave touched the pipe it was scorched. Not worth the effort in my opinion. Dry heat for most of mine.

[vinemaplebows]

Do not use dry heat on yew. Yew becomes very brittle in my opinion, and unless you let it reaclimate for at least a week it may snap!

Boiling stave will not hurt the wood, but you have the moisture issue. Wood turners boil their wood to help prevent cracking as the bowl dries. I suspect this may be very usefull in hard to dry woods like Osoberry, or Ocean spray....worth a shot.


VMB

[Aaron H]

How long should I let osage dry if I do boil it?  What about drying time whenever you steam osage?

[Pat B]

You can coat the area to be steamed or boiled with shellac. Shellac can take the heat and slow down the moisture intake.

[Bryce]

I've thrown dry heat out when it come to bending a good amount of wood. Boiling is IMHO the Best way to recurve and manipulate wood.


Especially yew and osage. Become so pliable after just 25 mins of boiling, I have bent the tips around a coffee mug.
Let sit for 4-5 hrs and your golden.

[Joec123able]

Wow that's a crazy bend Bryce I agree steam/boiling works much better then dry heat for sharper bends it makes the wood like a noodle and doesn't hurt it some people say they get checks in the wood after but I've never had it happen

[Del the cat]

Steam or dry heat.
The advantage of steam is you can't get it too hot. The disadvantage is it cools so quick, it's best if you can make a jig that steams it while you are making the bend.
I've never actually boiled.
Dry heat is fine but with Yew the sapwood needs protecting.
There are a lot of posts about both on my Bowyers Diary (the search facility on the blog works better than most)
It really depends what you are doing. I use a 5litre plastic bottle to confine the steam around a small part of the bow for localized bending, the steam is generated using a wallpaper steamer. This allows you to apply the bending force while the steam is on the wood.
This post is a good one:-
http://bowyersdiary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/spot-of-steam-bending.html
It shows the bending force is applied by a brick tied to the end of the bow! As the steam takes effect, the brick lowly pulled it down.
Del