Bending the Wood with Heat

A bow stave is not always straight. once you have a bow roughed out, and ready for tiller, sometimes the limbs are doglegged or crooked to the extent that things will not line up enough. Granted, a selfbow is never perfectly straight, and you don't need that. You do need things reasonably straight in order to facilitate easier tillering, limb harmonics, and string alignment in relation to the handle.

Two general methods are:

1. Steaming
2. Heat Gun

The heat gun is faster, and offers a higher chance to screw things up if you're not careful. Steam bending takes longer, but is more fool-proof.

The ideal time to straighten out a limb with heat is BEFORE you start tillering. Trying to heat-bend a working limb can result in a broken limb and certainly will alter the tiller. It's easier to straighten the limbs first, and then from there tiller the bow. First things first, and the first thing is to make sure you have a clean canvas for tillering. So let's get these limbs straightened out.

The Traditional Bowyer's Bible Volume 2 has an excellent section on bending wood. I would advise reading that chapter.

The basic technique is to heat a section of the limb, and then give it ONE bend, hold it, and let it cool. If needs more bending, heat it again, bend it ONCE, and let it cool. Wood cools rapidly and trying to get two bends out of one heat application can crack the limb. Once you take the wood off the heat, you literally have seconds to bend it. I speak from experience on this. Once the limb is heated it can be bent on a form, on your knee, or the corner of a table, whatever works best.

In my experience, I stick to bending with the limb tips or the handle. It seems that most problems can be solve by addressing those areas.