Bending wood doesn’t require superhuman strength. There are a few common recipes and procedures that can be employed to create curved parts from straight boards.
The Basics:
• Steam it: Heat and humidity will make a board ripe for bending.
• Laminate it: Clamping a stack of thin strips to a form is an alternative method for creating curved parts.
Steam it
Steaming uses steam or boiling water to make the wood pliable so that it can be bent to a form. Once cooled, the bent piece will retain its shape. There are advantages to this method: It retains the continuous long-grain pattern, there are no glue lines, and it doesn’t waste material. Steaming does have some drawbacks: It’s difficult to contain springback, which means the form may lose some of its shape, and pieces can break if there are any defects or issues with the orientation of the grain. You can reduce breakage by using straight-grained lumber with no grain run out. Grain run out refers to areas of a board where the grain ends along the edge. Wood will bend when steamed at a temperature of about 200°F. The length of time it must steam depends on the thickness of the work piece; it can range anywhere from 20 minutes for a 1/4-in. chair-back slat to one hour for a 2-in. thick chair post. Steamers are relatively easy to make with supplies available at the hardware store; they are also commercially available.
Laminate it
Another method for bending wood is to re-saw several thin pieces of wood and laminate them clamped to a form. When the glue dries, you’re left with a single piece that holds the shape of the form. Preparing the thin pieces for a lamination involves re-sawing a piece on the tablesaw or bandsaw. The drawback here is that you lose a lot of material to the kerf of the sawblade. Springback is not a major concern when making a bent lamination, especially if you use a rigid polyurethane- or resin-based adhesive. Not only do these glues hold their form, but they also prevent the layers of the lamination from slipping and losing their form over time, a process known as creep.
