Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Arrows => Topic started by: GregB on August 28, 2009, 08:11:30 am
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I've been straightening some tonkin cane down in my basement the last few days...late start at getting some arrows for hunting season. Yesterday I was working on the third one of the afternoon and it was a booger! It had more nodes then most of the others and was pretty curvey. I had spent a lot more time on it then normal and was thinking..."be my luck that I'll break it when almost finished". Well, while on the last node I felt it give although it didn't come apart in two pieces in my hand I knew it was a goner. Went ahead and snapped it into and called it an evening!
I've been using my heat gun on this batch, where last year I used a one burner stove. I like the heat gun much better...just lightly clamp it in a vise.
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I do the same with the heat gun Greg, I also cull shafts like that right from the get go, no sense wasting time on them eh :)
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i had a few like that. man there is ALOT of time that go's into makeing these suckers, but man i love doing it. ;D
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Greg, tonkin is harder to straighten than most cane, seems like, a bit more brittle. I use the heat-gun-in-a-vise method a lot for straightening shafts, too.
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Huh... Never thought about using my vice OR my heat gun... Usually use a lit can of Sterno cooking fuel and just sit outside and hand straighten them over the open flame. That's with river cane though never straightened tonkin before...
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Josh nice thing about a heat gun is you can confine the heat to small areas or you can heat a whole internode section.
Another trick I was taught for straighening a node is to wrap a wet rag around the shaft on each side of the node to be straightened
this keeps the heat in the node and allows it be gently straighened.
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I use the heat-gun-in-a-vise method a lot for straightening shafts, too.
Hillbilly, I think I first heard it from you about using the heat gun. BigA was working on a batch prior to my starting and was using a heat gun and liked it a lot better so I decided you guys had to be on to something... ;)
Another trick I was taught for straighening a node is to wrap a wet rag around the shaft on each side of the node to be straightened this keeps the heat in the node and allows it be gently straighened.
That sounds like a good idea Dana! I usually jump around on the shaft to allow the cane time to cool before I do an adjacent node, but I have noticed that I've undone some straightening by getting heat on it again when I didn't mean too! :)
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Greg I hope the fella that told me that trick doesn't shun me for passing it along :o
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Greg
I found that when I was using my heat gun for straightening tonkin, I was getting it too hot. Which in turn was causing me to ruin lots of shafts. A friend told me to use lower heat for longer and work on one section at a time then move to the next shaft and so on. It takes me a ton of time but I ruin a lot less stuff.
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Yep! I hear you all. Been there done that. Working with, believe it or not, gooseberry as a shafting material. If I let it dry long enough, its prety tough stuff. Need to use for shaft and footing inserts though. Now if I can just get some time to work on my archery stuff some more! Never enough time or energy!
David T