Steam Bending Plywood Or Sheet Bending

Steam bending creates a strong dependable bend.

Steam bending plywood or sheet bending.

If the curve doesn t hold re clamp the plywood to the mdf form. Use your hands to test the bent plywood. Watch how easy it is to bend a plywood to make a beautiful furniture. Steam won t do anything good for you with plywood.

It came with an aluminum pipe to direct steam into the box. As the bend follows the grain of the wood it eliminates the weakness issues of a band sawn curve. Well i tried to bend 6mm plywood around my buck as described in a previous thread and after steaming it for almost an hour got absolutely no where. Plywoods are not often made from species that respond to steam bending and their laminations prevent the compression you need to force to the inside of the curve when you steam bend.

Any electric kettle with a cylindrical spout for inserting a pipe or attaching a hose will do. It s helpful to know how either for making skateboard ramps or something bent. An easier option is to saturate all the layers of the plywood using warm wet towels prior to bending. Do not pressurize the steam chamber.

Cut a form using multiple layers of mdf until you reach the desired thickness for the bend. Building a steam box for bending wood only requires exterior grade plywood waterproof glue and an electric tea kettle. You can use steam to soften plywood for bending but it isn t the best way to do it because it requires a steamer large enough to accommodate a plywood sheet which can be difficult to construct and expensive to buy. Just like all bending methods choose a knot free strip of plywood.

It s only for temperate hardwoods known to steam bend like ash oaks elm hickory maple beech and a few others. Plywood pre cut for kerf bending will be cut the full length of the sheet with the exception of only a small amount of plywood at each end. Try gently bending the ends of the plywood to see if it straightens out or holds its curve. I bought my kettle from lee valley see source below.

Bending plywood with steam you might think that steam bending plywood is the way to go for all kinds of projects but this method is best for small pieces such as model parts. Actually there s a lot of projects that you can implement th. Pressurized steam is detrimental to successful wood bending and extremely dangerous.