Thread: bending wood
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Rick Tyler
 
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Default bending wood

On Thu, 8 Apr 2004 15:05:05 +0200, "Marc Camfferman"
wrote:

How can i bent wood on a simple way.

example: I want to bent mahony 1 inch by 1 inch and 30 inch long pretty
far.


Water is your friend. You can steam it or soak it. Others have
described steaming. If you only ever want to bend a piece or two, you
can just soak it for a week or so. A friend and I did this with
Douglas fir for the rubstrips on his drift boat. We glued a couple of
4" diameter PVC pipes end-to-end with a coupler, and put a cap on the
end. This gave us a 20-foot long pipe. We slid the sticks in, filled
it with water, and loosely capped the end. A week later, they wrapped
around the gunwales of the drift boat with ease. He let them dry for
a while and then took them off, applied epoxy, and clamped them back
on.

The bad part about water soaking is that it takes a long time. The
good part is that it is very well suited to small projects. No
hunting down a heat source, steam container, hosing, and all that
stuff.

If I had a lot of bending to do, or I was in a hurry, there would be
no contest: I would use steam.

- Rick Tyler

--
"Ignorant voracity -- a wingless vulture -- can soar only into the
depths of ignominy." Patrick O'Brian