Yew long bow advice making

[Demonwolf444]

Need some advice, Basically all my yew long bows very quickly take on a lot of set, ie nearly at brace height,and i want to avoid this.

When choosing yew i usally work with the natural bend as apposed to against it as i think its easier on the wood.
All the wood is well dried some times a year or more.
Generally they all have some sort of natural bend in them ( only because my first attempt i tried to work against a natural bend, to which the bow refused to bend and just shattered, but it was a PERFECT piece of yew and had i worked it the other way it probably would have made a lovely bow )

Generally i dont heat treat my bows, would steaming and clamping straight and heat treating make any difference?

I am tempted to strip the finish from two of my bows, steam them for a decent amount of time and clamp them straight then heat treat them, but i dont want to go through all that effort to find that they take it all back up again!

 

[dwardo]

Mornin,

Set is basically the cells in the wood collapsing under pressure and once they fail they lose their ability to return to their original shape.
Set is only really caused by wood that is not properly dry or design/execution problems.
Once set has happened there is very little you can do about it. Heat treating can help but works best before the set really kicks in. This type of heat treating needs to be done with a heat gun. Steam is only for shaping wood where as the higher temperatures from a heat gun will actually change the structure of the wood making it more reistant to compression.
When u say the wood has seasoned for a year do you mean still in the round or in stave form? If still in the round its probably not dry. Also were you store the wood is very important. To help buy an accurate set of digital scales and a RH meter.
In regards to the natural shape I would always rather have 2 inch of reflex over deflex. Unless I specifically wanted a deflex reflex profile for a high peformance short flat bow.

 

[yarrow]

Taking set is due to high moisture content in the wood. Leaving it for a year is no guarantee that the wood is dry enough not to take up set. Steam is ok but I would advise you to spend a little money on a cheep heat gun, the type used to strip paint. Use this to heat the area of the limb you want to correct, bare in mind that once you have set in any given bow its very hard to get rid on it. Yew heat straightens very well and you can correct amazing bends and twists with heat. Steam is ok but you have to wait till the limb dries out again, heat gun works in two ways, correcting the twist and dropping that all important moisture content bellow 10%. This is a key to good bows, low moisture. I sometimes put a stave in a home made dehydrator for 12 hours just before I begin work on a stave. Most staves kept in a nice dry environment will still have 14 - 15 % moisture even though they feel bone dry. Once you have heat corrected the bow give it a day to allow the moisture content to even out (obviously if you are heating a specific area this will be drier that others) and don't pull it till then. Three things that will transform your bow making - heat gun, bow form, tillering tree allowing you to exercise the bow and watch the bend.

Just seen dwardo's reply, singing from the same song sheet, heat gun, heat gun, heat gun!

 

[dwardo]

Love your bow rack mate lol broken arrows? I got plenty of those spare!