Steam Bending: The Good, The Bad & The Incredibly Ugly

Going into this ancillary project Ernest and I were confident that we knew what had to be done to complete this assignment. Little did we know, it's not how much information you read, it's how much experience you have.

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

We followed all the rules, milled up some thin stock, steamed them for an hour (one hour per 1" is the rule) and we still faced immense hurdles. Most woods wouldn't budge after one hour.

Figure 3.

Figure 4.

Figure 5.

We strong armed some of them to bend ever so slightly.

Figure 6.

We over steamed a lot of them just to be able to make them pliable. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes the wood fell apart before we started the bend.

Figure 7.

Figure 8.

Then we started to notice that we needed some new instruments, a moisture meter, to tell us when the wood is at the right moisture level for bending. Backing strap so the wood doesn't split when following a bend.

Figure 9.

In the end, I believe we are almost to the point where we can consistently bend wood to the form we want. The beginning was hard, we steamed more than a dozen pieces and 90% of them failed. But we have a few great bends that we can look forward to repeating again.

Looking forward to more testing!