Bending Oak
- Thread starter bdanyla
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mastercabman
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- Apr 15, 2007
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How long did you steam it for?bdanyla said:
bdanyla said:
bdanyla said:
As others noted, this is really a pretty mild bend. If the material of the countertop will hold glue well, you may be able to just bend and glue it cold. Try bending it in place and see how much force it takes.
You could also build it up from layers (laminate it). A 1/4 inch thick layer should go easily around that curve, so we aren't talking about dozens of veneer-thin layers. If you saw the layers from a single board and align them carefully, the seams will be nearly invisible.
But if you are determined to steam bend, two hours is way more than necessary for a 3/4 inch thick piece, and can actually make the wood sort of spongy or stringy. The idea is more to get the wood hot than to get it wet; steam is just extremely effective at delivering heat without burning the wood. 45 minutes should be enough if you have a good source of steam. Make a form from scrap, with a curve of perhaps 3-4 inches (because the wood doesn't have to deform much to go around a mild curve, there will actually be more springback than with a tighter curve!). For this mild a curve I don't think you need a bending strap, but because the edge is wider than it is thick, you need to pay extra attention to keeping it even while bending it. That is, keep it from twisting up or down into a spiral. Make sure to use wooden clamps or put wooden cauls between metal clamps and the hot wet oak, else they will leave black stains.
Good luck!
It occurred to me after I wrote the above that I was assuming the 1 1/2 inch direction was across the edge of the countertop (vertical) and the 3/4 inch direction is the thickness of the edge. If you were intending the other way around, that is, an edge that projects 1 1/2 inches flat from the countertop, so you are bending along the 1 1/2 width, then you have an much more difficult situation. The force needed to bend a piece increases very fast (cubically, I think) with thickness. A 1 1/2 inch piece will need a heavy form, strong clamps, and almost surely a strap to keep the outside from splitting out. It will try to twist as you bend it, so you may have to clamp across the bend as well as onto the curve. A wrench can be helpful to force out a twist as you clamp. I once bent a couple of 2 inch cherry boards through an 8 inch curve over 5 feet, and it took the strongest clamps I could find just to pull it down onto the form (no way I could bend it by hand!).
