Heat Treating Red Oak

[Zedd]

I am in the process of making my second bow, another mollegabet. It is a red oak (from Lowes/Home Depot) board bow and am considering heat treating it. Is this recommended for red oak? Making split bamboo fly rods has familiarized myself with the process of heat treating, but bamboo is a grass. Given how dry the boards from Lowes/Home Depot are, I am concerned it will make the wood to brittle. Any suggestions and tips would be appreciated. Thanks all for supporting this wonderful forum.

[bubbles]

I have had good success heat treating red oak boards.  If you follow Marc St Louis article in the TBB's you can't go wrong.

[Stick Bender]

If I remember right I think Marc wrote heat tempering red oak worked ok for standard designs but not great for high stress designs , I dont know the red oak boards I get from HD seem pretty brittle & dry but that could be a reginal thing , I had one red oak board bow blow up on the tellering tree not blaming the wood but it looked pretty dry & brittle on the inside .

[bubbles]

I dont think red oak is your best wood for high stress designs, heat treated or not.

[Stick Bender]

I know HD is carrying maple boards now if you could find a strait grained one might make a better choice for a molly I know almost pig hunter a member here did a build along for a molly with HD maple.

[Zedd]

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a Home Depot/Loew's (or any other lumberyard) in Dallas/Fort Worth that stocks maple. If anyone down here knows different, please let me know. I'll see if I can find the heat treating article you are referencing. I am leaning to considering the big box stores as being 'pre-heat treated'. Thanks for the input.

[bubby]

I don't heat treat red oak boards, never had much success with it

[bubbles]

Now that I think about it, the red oak boards I heat treated were all backed with either rattan or rawhide. (Backing laid down AFTER the heat treatment)

[Zedd]

Now that I think about it, the red oak boards I heat treated were all backed with either rattan or rawhide. (Backing laid down AFTER the heat treatment)

I love using rattan on my grips for 5 wt or smaller split bamboo rods... How would you back with rattan?

[Philipp A]

Even though your pic is not a bow, I still had to comment. That is one fancy looking fly rod!!

[Zedd]

Thank you! It is a 4 wt based on Paul Young's Perfectionist and is my favorite trout rod. I put it here to show how rattan is used on a fly rod, I am still curious how rattan is used as backing.

[bubbles]

Send me one of those fly rods and I'll let you in on the secret.

[bubbles]

It's been a while but if you have lots of rattan lying around...

[bubbles]

I think the way I did it was lay out the rattan as best you can on a piece of duct tape. Then spead glue on both the rattan and the bows back.  Lay your piece of rattan duct tape on the bow, and then I think I used two flexible wood slats to spread even pressure on the rattan and clamped that down. There is some cleanup invloved cleaning some of the excess glue out of the cracks between the rattan.   I don't think it really adds any performance, more of a splinter prevention.

[Zedd]

LOL!!! I bet you would! One rod takes an experienced (50+ rods made) about 40-45 man-hours and the drying process (at least what I do) takes another 2 months. I have only made about 15 and am still learning. I love the look of that rattan backing. It looks like a bit of work to get it on the bow nicely.