Re hydration

[Stick Bender]

Hi Fellas I have been working on straiting this ruffed out bow this morning & going to let it hydrate for a couple of weeks  but have been noticing that my RH in my stave/bow room has been running 31% RH @ 72 F  has any body had any problems rehydrating heat straitined osage in the winter with low RH Im in no hurry if I have to let it sit longer no problem ? But just want to make sure its rehydrated proper I have a non invasive moister meter but the wood is to narrow now to get a good reading ?

[PEARL DRUMS]

Same humidity we carry through the winter, or drier. A 24 hour wait is plenty of time. The humidity in your bathroom will be highest. Leave it in there if you are concerned its to dry.

[BowEd]

Yes in the bathroom is good.If you only heated where it's going to be stiff on the bow 24 hour or even less.In the working portion on a hard heat treatment I have a 10 day rule.Each to his own.Taking your time never hurt anything with bow making.

[willie]

The relative humidity outside where it is colder, is much higher, assuming that the absolute humidity is the same.
Does anyone have any idea if the moisture uptake rate with wood, is affected by temperature?

[Stick Bender]

Thats a good question Willie I was wondering the same thing I also wonder if it makes much diference on the rate that the wood absorbs the moister ?

[DC]

We know that the higher the temp, the faster the molecules would be moving. So at a given RH the warmer something is, the faster things would happen. It's easy to imagine that something would dry faster if it was warmer. It's not so easy to imagine if it would get wet faster but I think the same process is happening, just in reverse

[Selfbowman]

After building a few bows I have noticed water comes out with heat .  If it is in the stave at the time you are heating it. It's to green let it dry. As far as letting hydrate I let it get cooled down . Usualy a couple hrs or overnight. I don't seem to have problems with the bows doing this. Patience when you have one stave is harder than if you have 5-6 bows in the works at the same time. I have found going back and forth between bows I get second looks at things in a bow that I missed before. I seam to get faster better response from the wood on the heat bench in winter when the bow cools faster . The wood seams to set faster and stay where you put it. I am talking 60* or lower in temp.  Arvin

[Stick Bender]

I'm with you self bowman I use to only work on one bow at a time because that's all the wood I had but now I do several bows in different stages its a lot easer to be patient,  on this particular stave I hot boxed it prior to working on it so I knew it was was dry & down to 9% or a tad below and with the dry winter I'm worried about rehydration so I'm just going to let it sit for a bit.