I am sitting here at work worried that I may have overdone it in the process of fixing a twisted limb.

I have a 50# 58" browning recurve that a friend brought over with a twisted limb.

I anchored it to a table with some clamps, then pulled the tip the needed direction with some paracord and tied it to the table leg.

I was real proud of the amount of torque applied thinking wow a few days of this and that baby will be straight again.

Now my thoughts are Hmmm can I over twist it and put a twist in the limb the other direction?

thanks for input oz

You can. You can also over twist it and break it.

It is completely unnecessary to leave a glass bow clamped like you describe unless you heated it and you are keeping it in place until it cools.

Just go the other way and straighten it out. It may take a little while, but eventually you’ll get it right.

MP

Thanks guys I will go home at lunch, and cut it loose, and see where I am at with it.

If I decide it is still not staying aligned with the string grove and I elect to heat it, should that be done in a heat box, or could a person do that with a heat gun. The heat gun would scare me, thinking I could damage the finish.

thanks again. oz

I don' and won't use heat. Heat is what sets off the epoxy and heat is what reverses it.

I don't personally think heat does anything unless you get the limb hot enough to affect the glue, which then creates another problem.

But everybody has their own opinion.

What fdp and mdph said in their initial posts. I've sometimes used heat, but not a lot. Some just run the limb under hot water. I don't like that idea. If there's any openings in the finish, water will get in and swell the wood and begin the delamination process. I have heated the area to bend gently with a hair drier.

I always use a heat gun. I've never affected the finish on a bow, or had a limb fail because of it, and never had a glass bow come back that needed corrected again.

Now that said, many limbs have been corrected successfully without heat, and perhaps the heat gun SHOULD scare the average guy, but I've made hundreds of corrections with a heat gun on glass bows, selfbows, trilams, bamboo backed bows, etc, so I'm intimately familiar with it and its limits. If you heat it carefully but over or under-correct it. it can be done again. I've heated bows glued with Smooth On epoxy 4 or 5 times to get a limb precisely aligned and they survived just fine. By the way, I'm very careful about the way I heat the limb... distance and speed of the gun, temp, etc.

That's been my experience, for what it's worth.

Now you watch... the next one I do will fall apart. Lol

Normally, but not always, you can straighten them with no heat and by just taking time to twist the other direction. If you use your hands, you probably won't be able to twist it enough to break anything. On occasions when it doesn't work that way, I use hot tap water...about 120 degrees till it's warm to touch, the twist. That normally will work for 99% of twists, at least in my experience.

I've never had any issues using the hot water, and then setting it when straight again with cold tap water. Been doing that for at least four decades. Just dry it off when done...string it and let it strung for a day.

I have broken (delaminated) two glass lam bows with a heat gun both were 6os vintage bows, stick with hot tap water. Some of the time you don't need any heat at all, just string it up and give it twist with your hand.

I was pretty good at straightening glass lam bows until I offered to straighten these for some friends for free.

Seeing as how I destroyed them I felt the need to replace them, the first cost me $125 to buy a replacement, I had an identical bow as the second I my collection that I turned over to guy #2.

I swore off of straightening other peoples bows.

All you need to do...

Hair dryer just get it warm and keep the dryer moving don't hold it in one spot. A little bit goes a long way.

I forgot to mention, if I try to straighten a solid fiberglass bow I get out the heat gun and go at it like a house on fire.

A guy brought a Bear 76er by a year or so ago that looked like a pretzel, I told him I might destroy it in the process but I would give it a try. I actually straightened it, it took at least a dozen scorching hot heat sessions. It was one of the Custom Deluxe versions with long limbs, I shot it, it wasn't a bad shooter.

Then I had second thoughts; I didn't know the guy who brought it to me, he said he was a friend of a friend. He looked like a crackhead and drove a beat up truck. I could see the lawsuits swirling if the bow failed and injured him, I took the string I made for the bow off and sent him a message that I wouldn't trust the bow and it should be a wall hanger. He never came and picked it up.

I didn't make it home at lunch yesterday, I pulled the bow out of the contraption I had concocted to torque the limb, and it looked fairly good. I strung it and went outside to shoot a few shots and make sure the string stayed in the string grove, and it did.

I am optimistic it will stay straight now.

If I have to take more drastic measures to get it to stay straight, I will consult this thread again, and choose my medicine.

Thanks for all the input guys,

oz

I've had very few instances in which a limb that I straightened regained any of the twist that actually came out.

One of those was the lower limb of a Groves Mag II that had just enough twist in it to irritate me when I looked at it. Didn't hurt the shooting at all. I would straighten that limb and a few days later the twist would return. That went on for literally years.

I came to think that maybe when Jimmy Elrod laid up that particular set of limbs the bottom one was a little off center in the form.

I had straightened this limb during deer season last fall for the guy. Then I loaned him a lighter draw bow for league and such. This spring when we strung his bow back up for Turkey season, he found it to be twisted again. So this is round two with this particular bow. That is why I was being a little more aggressive with it.

Time will Tell.

Thanks again guys.

oz

I had straightened this limb during deer season last fall for the guy. Then I loaned him a lighter draw bow for league and such. This spring when we strung his bow back up for Turkey season, he found it to be twisted again. So this is round two with this particular bow. That is why I was being a little more aggressive with it.

Time will Tell.

Thanks again guys.

oz

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