restoring camber in a cheap now

[baroquecello]

I've got a couple of cheap bows at hand that are in ok shape apart from that they have lost practically all of their camber. I'd like to try and recamber them. As they were cheap bows and now worthless, its no loss if I mess up.

 

I don't really know what I'm doing, and was just thinking of clamping a heat gun and holding the stick in the hot air, turning it and moving it back and fro, so that it doesn't overheat locally, but gets warm all through, and then handbend it into shape. But I guess there must be better ways of doing it....

[Brad Dorsey]

I explained how I straighten and camber bows in post #7 of this thread:

 

http://www.maestronet.com/forum/index.php?/topic/320525-bow-repair-question/

 

I have never tried doing it with a heat gun, but I imagine it could be done with one.

[baroquecello]

Thanks Brad, thats a great help!

[Chris Llana]

I used a heat gun to camber a bow, and it worked very well—10 minute job.

[Claraa12]

"Restoring camber in a budget-friendly way can be achieved through proper alignment and suspension adjustments. Consult a professional mechanic to assess the specific needs of your vehicle. They can suggest affordable solutions to bring back optimal camber, ensuring better handling, tire wear, and overall performance." 

 

 

Edited May 29, 2023 by Claraa12

[Wood Butcher]

Erm… 

[FiddleDoug]

I was taught to use a curved block to camber a bow. It allows you to localize and control the bend. Remember, you have to hold the bend while the wood cools!

Here's my block. It clamps to the bench. The bending surface is about 8" long.

[Mr. Bean]

7 hours ago, Claraa12 said:

"Restoring camber in a budget-friendly way can be achieved through proper alignment and suspension adjustments. Consult a professional mechanic to assess the specific needs of your vehicle. They can suggest affordable solutions to bring back optimal camber, ensuring better handling, tire wear, and overall performance." 

 

 

This is what we could expect on this forum, once ChatGPT was introduced!

[GeorgeH]

28 minutes ago, Mr. Bean said:

This is what we could expect on this forum, once ChatGPT was introduced!

Not sure why the mods let that pass.

[Wood Butcher]

49 minutes ago, Mr. Bean said:

This is what we could expect on this forum, once ChatGPT was introduced!

While we might chuckle about this, in years to come, humanity will become even more moronated.
Then computers will take over, and it will herald the end of many things, classical music amongst them.

[David Burgess]

8 hours ago, Claraa12 said:

"Restoring camber in a budget-friendly way can be achieved through proper alignment and suspension adjustments. Consult a professional mechanic to assess the specific needs of your vehicle. They can suggest affordable solutions to bring back optimal camber, ensuring better handling, tire wear, and overall performance."

It's not entirely irrelevant. Camber settings on bow can affect handling, just like they can on a car. They can also affect bow hair life, like they can tire wear on a car.

One of my cars came from the factory with camber settings which were a compromise between street tire life, and best handling on a racetrack. Since there aren't many winding roads around here (which put more loads on the outside of the tires), this resulted in the inside of the tires wearing much more quickly than the outsides. So I had it re-aligned for better tire wear during normal street use (because these tires cost about $600 each, and only last about 15,000 miles anyway under easy use)

[David Burgess]

24 minutes ago, Wood Butcher said:

While we might chuckle about this, in years to come, humanity will become even more moronated.
Then computers will take over, and it will herald the end of many things, classical music amongst them.

I've been thinking the same thing. The best jobs of the future might mostly be those requiring on-site construction, maintenance or repair, or those requiring on-site replacement of components or assemblies. These would be difficult to farm out to foreign countries where labor is cheaper, and probably cannot be performed by AI anytime soon.

[Michael Appleman]

Just had a bow-maker friend re-touch the camber on a nice Morizot. No special camber buck, he just uses the corner of his workbench and a bunsen burner with a diffuser head. The most important thing he warns about is letting the bow fully cool before putting it under tension and playing on it. It was ok to give it a quick try right away to make sure the re-cambering got rid of the "weak spots," but he warned if I tried to play on it before the next day, the bow would probably go back to how it was before the re-cambering. 

[Rico Suave]

On 10/29/2014 at 4:10 PM, Brad Dorsey said:

I explained how I straighten and camber bows in post #7 of this thread:

http://www.maestronet.com/forum/index.php?/topic/320525-bow-repair-question/

I have never tried doing it with a heat gun, but I imagine it could be done with one.

At the Nov 2022 VSA Convention, I asked Rodney Mohr about his use of flame vs heat gun  -

He replied that he simply did not like the noise of a heat gun. 

Video 2 in this playlist shows Cambering 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWEoIUgLaMSvXgIFewMa5reRx8Z1aBYp1