Design question

[Ricardovanleeuwen]

Ah oke ill try  to make it a bit smoother haha

[Ricardovanleeuwen]

Yes, efficient 40lb can outshoot overbuilt or set affected 50lb bow.

For high arrow velocities and light arrows you go for light tips and non-working ends of limbs acting as levers like Holmegaard design. For fast heavy arrows you need high stored energy, whole limb doing its share of work like Sudbury bow. For both cases you aim for low set and even slight reflex to have high initial draw and fat draw energy curve. There are great articles on this in TBBs.

A sudbury bow is like a paddle bow but longer?

[willie]

yes . but it bends very slightly in the hand

https://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/index.php?topic=49412.5

http://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/index.php?topic=35731.0

[PatM]

Relative to the limb thickness it likely didn't bend much at all though.   It was 1 3/16  by less than an inch wide.

  I made a replica many years ago and any bend was not visible and certainly not perceptible in the hand.

[Ricardovanleeuwen]

I tried using the caul as shows in the photo, this happend to the plum branch wich wanted to test on, is this bad?

[DC]

Is the thin white line a split? How thick is the wood where you bent it?

[gutpile]

when bending wood especially into a recurve.. I suggest boiling 15 min per 1/4 of wood to bend.. you will need to use a piece of sheet metal on belly side to prevent splinters... lay it against belly tight as you go for all the bend at once.. no time to waste when you pull out of water.. do a few test runs to make sure everything will fit your caul ... gut

[Ricardovanleeuwen]

The thin White Line is one side of a splinter lifting up. It is about 0.8 inch or An inch. I steamed the whole stave for about An hour and user a leather belt over the belly, could be that i didn't pull It tight enough

[DC]

Fill it with CA and continue

[Ricardovanleeuwen]

Should'nt i try to sand It out? It dont apears to be deep, not sure because the leather strap is still partly on

[Ricardovanleeuwen]

Oh and i forgot to mention, i started with the easyest limb.. this one already had a little bit of reflex and was free of knots. The second limb has a bit of deflex and a knot on the side... How should i do this one

[DC]

Should'nt i try to sand It out? It dont apears to be deep, not sure because the leather strap is still partly on

Don't worry about getting rid of it now. Once the stave starts to look like a bow then you can make it pretty. You might even be able to thin it out enough to get rid of it.

[Hamish]

Its probably asking too much to bend a recurve with a knot that size. You could try it, and it might work. Just be prepared for catastrophic failure.
I haven't done a lot of steam bending, but all the texts stress, using straight grained knot free wood. Good luck Bud, I'm hoping for your success.

[DC]

If I'd known this knot was here I would have suggested making a straight bow. In my experience you won't get a usable bend with that knot there. It won't bend where the knot is mainly because it's too thick and if you thin it out it will probably break. Can you shorten the bow enough to eliminate the knot? If not I would suggest straightening out the other end. I will only recurve almost perfect tips. Look at the picture and how uneven the curve is and how big the knot is. I should have left this one straight. This is also plum.
Oh also I'm not sure how much good your leather strap is doing. The reason the strap is there is to stop the back from stretching. Leather has too much stretch for that job. Thin steel is what you want.

[DC]

If you decide to shorten the bow don't cut the knot off. Cut about 10-12mm past it. The last 20-25mm of the recurve doesn't bend much anyway