Monday 3 June 2013

Law of Unintended Consequences

I strung the hazel recurve, it looked great, the lower limb had stiffened up nicely.
Maybe a hint too much, but I wasn't going to fall into the trap of weakening it and ending up back at square one.
I flexed it a few times in front of the patio door so I could watch the reflection to see the shape of the tiller.
It was just right, but then as I came down, I noticed the string wasn't sitting in the string groove in the reflexed tip. The heat used to temper the belly had allowed the twist to relax back into the bow... drat.
It didn't take too long to jig it up and apply some gentle heat, you can see how I did it in the pics. After 5mins of heat (with the gun further away from the wood than in the full heat treating) the tourniquet holding the tip in position had gone almost loose. The heat had obviously relaxed the wood and the tension required to hold it in place had all but gone.
I gave it another 5 mins having shifted the gun along a bit.
The arrows taped to the tips are to let me see the alignment.
The other pics show the remaining bark near the grip and the colour resulting from the heat treating.
I'm hoping to maybe shoot it at the weekend. Once it's had an hour or so to cool I'll take it off the jig and I might do a wacky abstract paint job on it. I won't string it until it's had a day or so to recover.
Note the baby anvil. Very useful thing a small anvil, it's also very reliable ;)




No comments:

Post a Comment