Steam Bending Hardwood

Place the lumber you want to bend in a container full of water completely submerged and soak it overnight before you steam it.

Steam bending hardwood. Essentially the more open the grain the easier it. But there are three drawbacks to this method. Air dried lumber is much easier to bend than kiln dried. This will make the wood much easier to bend after steaming.

When you remove your piece from the box and transport it to your mold it begins to cool losing elasticity. And when not in use the box takes up precious shop space. Soaking it water overnight also helps a great deal. Seal the door and turn on the steam leaving the wood in the box for 1 hour for each inch of thickness.

Then create a form to shape the wood and place the wood that you want to steam into the box. Before bending kiln dried lumber make a soaking vessel from 4 pvc pipe and end caps. Wood selection is very important for successful steam bending. The typical way to do this is to build a steam box that fits your part to be bent inside.

Soak the lumber for one week in a mixture of cup fabric softener per gallon of water. Shipwright louis sauzedde shows us more about how to use a plastic bag to steam wood so it can be bent in place while being steamed. To bend wood you need steam. Bending qualities of various hardwoods were tested by the u s.

In this video a large pi. Forest service and the results show that white oak hackberry and red oak were ranked as the best woods for steam bending while soft maple yellow poplar and hard maple were ranked as the least compatible with the steam bending process. Soak the wood you want to bend in water for at least a day before steaming. The pieces should be end coated to prevent excessive end grain absorption.

The box must be sized to fit your piece. To bend wood easily use a steam box with a pvc tube to add the steam and an exit hole to release excess steam. Keep in mind that air dried lumber.