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It's almost bending time!

John Pollman

John Pollman

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Rochester Hills, MI
The king of overbuild!
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A few years ago, I bought a stack of 100 11-3/4 x 48 particle board shelves from Home Depot for $25. It's great for patterns and such and I've still got a ton of it left. I have to bend some 3/4 Poplar. Initially, I had planned on resawing it to about 1/4" and laminating it. But I have a good steam box and decided to try to bend it in one piece first. The forms are done. I'm gonna build the fixture tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes.
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The radius of the front of the slat will be sharper than the radius of the back.
I'd trim the thickness of your back slat off the back side of the jig to make it fit better.

Are you using a single thickness or gluing up a lamination? A single will have 'springback' but a glue-lam won't.

Use hide glue, cascamite, or a resin-type glue. PVA glues will likely creep over time.
 
Jim DeLaney said:
The radius of the front of the slat will be sharper than the radius of the back.
I'd trim the thickness of your back slat off the back side of the jig to make it fit better.

Are you using a single thickness or gluing up a lamination? A single will have 'springback' but a glue-lam won't.

Use hide glue, cascamite, or a resin-type glue. PVA glues will likely creep over time.
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I used the original piece and traced it, so the radii should be correct. The original piece is oner piece and not laminated.
 
Jim DeLaney said:
Use hide glue, cascamite, or a resin-type glue. PVA glues will likely creep over time.
Click to expand...
Ditto what Jim said - I would add polyurethane glue (Gorilla) as an alternate. I've had very good results using it for bent laminations. Long open time and you're probably wetting the wood down to make it bend easier anyway.
 
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With that rugged bending form and the hydraulic jack, all you'd need is minimal steam and you could easily do single piece bends without all the work of glued laminations.

I was bending 3/4+" thick Ash by hand over a 5" radius to 90 degrees and it only took an hour of steam.
 
John Bartley said:
With that rugged bending form and the hydraulic jack, all you'd need is minimal steam and you could easily do single piece bends without all the work of glued laminations.

I was bending 3/4+" thick Ash by hand over a 5" radius to 90 degrees and it only took an hour of steam.
Click to expand...
I thought about trying a single piece, but I'm concerned about it springing back. This is four pieces of 3/16 Poplar. Instead of firing up the steamer, I just sprayed one side of each piece with hot water and in about 25 minutes, they were starting to bend by themselves. I might try to steam a piece of 3/4 and see what happens.
 
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