Torching Wooden Blade to Switch Hands

[Miller55 333]

Pretty straight forward, I have a couple wooden lefty blades and tried to give them away but nobody seems to want them, so I'm writing if it can torch them to make them righty. I used to do this to play with the curve back in the day, but never to such an extreme. Anybody have any experience with something like this?

[BenBreeg 493]

Would love to hear about how this goes, almost forgot about this.  I torched a few sticks when I was a kid just because I saw pros doing it.  Mostly I delaminated the fiberglass or whatever that woven wrap was...

[Miller55 333]

Haha slow and steady. I'm gonna try it either way, just figured I'd see if anyone had any tips first

[Vet88 674]

Bend and clamp, you have to hold the shape as the wood heats and cools, look up some boat building examples of putting the hull together if you want some ideas.

[flip12 714]

@Miller55 what blades do you have? I was just thinking about needing some tips because I want to try to put a slight toe and wedge on some E4 woodies.

Does anyone know of some good sealers to use if some of the lamination does end up splitting on the bottom?

[Miller55 333]

20 hours ago, flip12 said:

@Miller55 what blades do you have? I was just thinking about needing some tips because I want to try to put a slight toe and wedge on some E4 woodies.

Does anyone know of some good sealers to use if some of the lamination does end up splitting on the bottom?

Branches pattern 99, bit of a squared off toe

[McDougalfaschnitzer 32]

You'd probably have better luck using steam to soften things up for bending a large amount, but either way you'd probably wind up needing to refinish the wood.

[clarkiestooth 235]

Don't know if you already attempted this, but if it's not too late, don't do it. I played in the era where we always had to torch a blade. No way you can change a lefty to a righty. First, you'd dry out or burn the wood. Secondly, the fibreglass doesn't stretch, the backside fibreglass of the blade is longer than the frontside, so it would buckle. . It will also become unstuck to the wooden blade. Better to just same it as a relic of what the cavemen used before there were composite one piece sticks.