I need to bend 1/8 think by 6″ wide white oak to about a 3″ radius.
It will be glued to the inside curve of a plywood leg.
If i try to bend w/o steaming I can hear the fibers starting to crack.
I tried steaming ( to get it near the shape that I need to glue) but without success. ( my first try at steaming)
The wood cupped and I didn’t take a shape
Questions
How long should I steam a 1/8″ thick piece ( 1 hr/inch =12 minutes?)
It seamed that the wood cooled before I got it clamped was this the problem
thanks
Chris
Replies
Sir..
I really do not know. I bend wood for archery bows but never anything that wide. Mine are 3 inches wide to start with..
Try to soak in AND under water a day or two first?
EDIT: As in a brick on top of the wood to keep it at the bottom of the water!
Edited 6/29/2009 11:47 am by WillGeorge
next question
Can I try to re steam the first strips?
I would say YES but what do I know for sure? Hardly anything for SURE!
I have no (real) idea, but will be interested to read the responses of steam and hot-pipe bending experts.
My guess is that the cupping results from uneven moisture absorption during steaming. That might be a result of an insufficient volume of steam, or not steaming long enough for the width of the pieces. The failure to take the shape may be a factor of not working fast enough, or the pieces not being hot enough all the way through.
Chris,
Micheal Fortune has a short video on a couple of article just do a search on the FWW home page.
Taigert
Chris, having done large herds of Shaker oval boxes in cherry and maple, the target is to get the 1/10" sides up to 180+ degrees F. so that the lignum in the wood gets soft enough to flex. This takes 8-10 min. in a tin trough on a two burner electric hot plate for the cherry and longer/hotter for the maple. If the fibers start to pop up on the outside of the bend, reheat and bend in the other direction.
The cherry was happy to bend but the maple was like a bad child. You must move fast, hot and wet - plan all moves before you pick up the the hot piece - no time for decision making. I hope this scope helps with the WO. All the best, Paddy
Michael Fortune had an interesting article on hot pipe bending in last month's FWW. He was doing pretty tight bends in thicker wood.
thanks
I think I'll try the pipe bending approach. let you know what happens.
I resawed these " veneers" down to .125, cannot go much thinner than that.
It's simple to make them thinner if you run them through a planer.. I've gotten wood so thin you could almost read a newspaper through it!
frenchy
I have a jet 12 planner that says the limit is 3/16
I added a particle board "bed" to raise the blades off of the table.
I Can get down to 1/8th but the rollers are rubbing on the bed now and the snip on the end is down to nothing and starting to chip.I think that that is as low as I can go.
I'm using a 20" Grizzly and I can get paper thin.
As for snip all of my wood is 8 1/2 feet long or 18 1/2 feet long etc.. I live with it and cut it off.. (buy sawmill wood and they throw in the last 6 inches for free)
First you have to steam bend green not kiln dried. If you need anything approaching that radius (3 inches?) I don't think you'll be successful not with oak!.. Second with thin wood you have seconds to bend it because it radiates heat so quickly it can be completely cooled off inside a minute.
Wide is really hard to work, I tried to get maple, 1/4 inch x3'' to Bend to a 4 foot radius, and got mixed results..
Quartersawn air dried bends best. Look at books and sources on violin making and hot pipe bending for tight curves. Thinner bends easier. There's only a few books on bending so you might want to invest in one. It typically takes some experimenting to figure it out so don't expect the first one or two to work.
Thanks for the responses!
It looks like I have more experimenting and studying to do.
I haven't been able to find air dried WO that wasn't split or cracked but I'm still looking.
I also want to bend some WO to repair a canoe's gunnel
Chris, I think I may be coming from a different place from all of the above. If I am going to steam bend, I go for solid wood. When I bend laminates, I do them cold. I have loaned the book that I learned from which had tables for the minimum radius for each species, and if I recall, I think for W Oak, was down around 1" for steam. If you want to do a laminate, I suggest that you just use a flitch cut stack of standard veneer. You should not have any problem bending it to 3" R. I use epoxy because of the long open time, and lubricity while it is wet. If you choose to steam, and have end-compression straps, and can get the wood over 210º all of the way through to the middle, then can get it on the form before it drops, you should be able to bend that. What are you making? is this just a knee brace? I would think there ought to be a place to buy that online to save having to go to all of this trouble, although I have not looked. If you want to try steaming your own. Start by describing your set-up in detail. When you start out steam bending, you should read everything very carefully, and don't think you can ignore one single detail. Failure only takes one little mis-understanding. You may not think something is important, or blink when reading a line, which means failure. Go to Leevalley to get the free booklet and anything you need for the process. Another way to get tight bends, is to find wood with grown crooks, then saw to follow the grain. Every tree that branches should have something close to what you need in there somewhere relative to how far out fro the pith. Grown crooks are everywhere in the branches of trees. Sawing them out and drying them is easier than any of the above, especially if you gather your own firewood, and just save a few crooks that look good. If you can't find or bend what you need, I know I can as well as some others. Although I am starting a large for me job.
You will never do that with steambending as you will never be able to apply the necessary end pressure to achieve the bend. Hot pipe bending will be your method for success.
Barrie, I have bent 2" thick material to less than 4" R, so this would be easy. I am sorry if you don't believe it, but that does not make it impossible. I have only offered to help with his question.
I think we are answering different questions...I agree that steambending your 2" stock would be possible for that radius but hot pipe bending is the route to go to bend thin stock.
Chris, I was out in the shop cleaning up for the next project. I had a little stack of W Oak veneer left over from another project. Just for fun, I bent the stack around a welding tank about that size just to see how easy it would bend.
Needless to say, the thin veneers bend very easily. If I were using epoxy, with however many plys it needed to reach your desired thickness, I don't think you would even need clamp pressure to make the bend.
After the epoxy has set, you would still have the same amount of wood fiber following your radius and probably less to worry about with your glue lines, than you would with thicker plys which had to be pre-bent that may not have a perfect arc length for each ply.
You might could do this with 1/16" veneer, but that would be harder to bend, and still may have a risk of breaking.
I don't think you will find an easier method than just using more thin veneers.
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