Board bow heat treat or steam taboos?

[CB57]

Spoke with a gentleman today who informed me adamantly that a Hickory board bow could not be heat treated or steam bent successfully. Anyone have any advice on this? I have one laid out, ready to rough in and want to heat treat into modest reflex.

[Hamish]

 Hickory boards have been used to make recurves like Ben Pearsons, since the 1940's and 50's.
Definitely can give it a dry heat into a modest reflex. It is sometimes reputed to be hard to steam bend, in that it needs more force than yew or osage to start the bend.
Perhaps this gentleman was dealing with kiln dried hickory. A lot of kiln dried timber won't respond very well to steam bending. Some steam bending and dry heat bending can cause checking. Ever since I used cooking oil when dry heating I haven't had any issues. You could also use, parafin, or animal grease, whatever is available.

[Hawkdancer]

Hamish,
 Do you know what technique Pearson used to get the recurve?   Steam, soak and steam, or dry heat, or some combination?  Down the road, after a few bows(I hope), I want to try to make a recurve from either hickory or oak.  I am "holding" a Ben Pearson " Old Hickory" heirloom that has a fatal crack to make a wall hanger mount for a young friend, the bow was hi s grandfather's bow.  Plan to do a bunch of pictures and measurements before I mount it.
Hawkdancer

[leonwood]

My first recurve was from a hickory quartersawn board. Boiled the tips for 45 minutes in a large pan and left in the form for 24 hours. After that it sprung back a bit so I used some dry heat (app. 15 minutes) on it while in the form and that did the job. That was 2 years ago and the bow still has the same recurve shape after thousands of arrows