Share your steambox tips - please!

[Jim Mackell]

Made a steambox using basic 1 x 10 pine to create a long box. Lined it with the pink foam insulation board to keep heat in. Using an electric wallpaper steamer to generate steam. First few runs have been OK, some snapping of wood and some springback when clamps are released after 24 hours. Now, after just 2 weeks the pink insulation is both swelling and melting from the steam.

How do you do your steaming? And how did you insulate your steambox?

Thanks!

[Paul Atkins]

I was in a shop that had a 14" aluminum light pole (no one would say where it came from) that had a hinged door on one end and a metal rack down the center. There was a custom boiler that held about 3 gallons of water and a pressure gauge on top. The boiler put out lots of steam so we didn't need any insulation. We also found that pressure didn't really make any difference in the bending or speed. We bent 40 or 50 10' white oak pieces for chair backs in a hairpin and used every clamp within sight. I bent some 1 1/2" cherry chair legs after turning them and that worked well. The springback was about 10-15 % so the form was made tighter. I actually liked doing it and don't know what happened to the setup. You really want steam and not just water vapor.

[James Baker SD]

I do not have insulation either. Just keep generating steam from an old pressure cooker I bought on the auction site. Not pressurized any more. Heat is from a propane camp burner. My box construction sounds similar to yours--1x10 wood rectangular cross section.

I do leave my bent pieces in the forms for 1 to 2 weeks rather than 24 hours and have had very little springback.

James

[harry strasil]

6ft long piece of 6 inch iron pipe, set on legs, slants towards back, yellow foil covered insulation around outside, 3/8 rod sliding rack inside with clear tubing on cross pieces, rubber gasket glued to door on top end with 1/4 inch hole to let pressure release, and sealed with a 1/4 inch threaded rod and a wingnut. boiler is another 6 inch long piece of 6 inch pipe with a 1 inch stub pipe welded into top of boiler and another on bottom of steam chamber. heat source is an electric hot plate, 1 1/4 radiator hose slips over the 2 stubs and as steam vapor condenses it runs back into boiler.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v81/irnsrgn/wood/steamer.jpg

[Bob Rufener]

I don't insulate the box. The wood is an insulator in itself. You should be able to maintain plenty of steam and heat to steam the wood for bending. I don't know if you put any sticks across the inside of the box but it helps to do that so the steam will basically surround the wood you are steaming.

[Troy Donson]

Jim, here is a link for a nice article and series of construction photos of Mike Dunbar's steamer. He was a featured craftsman helping Norm bend wood for a hat rack on the New Yankee Workshop. http://www.bayareawoodworkers.org/steambox/steambox.html

My 81 year old father swears by it. Says it's the easiest and most efficient steam box he's tried. He was told about it by his 93 year old (!!) mentor. (I'd love to write a book of my observations watching them 2 "work" together.)

I am going to be building one when it cools down outside. 96 degrees outside yesterday and I don't want to be surrounded by heat and steam...

Hope this helps,

Troy

[Rod Sheridan]

Hi Jim, mine is made from 1 X 6 lumber, I use an electric kettle to generate the steam.

I only bend small parts like chair slats so my steam box is only about 2 feet long.

It is on an incline so the condensate runs out.

Regards, Rod.

[Jeff Mohr]

My father-in-law and I built one out of pine. It was merely a box with a hole in it. No insulation. We used a portable electric stove top burner and an old pressure cooker and ran a copper pipe from it to the box. Worked out very well for 1/8 and 1/4 bending...didn't try anything thicker but someday I just might.

[Jim Mackell]

Thanks for the tips. Keep steamin !!

[Bill ThompsonNM]

+1 for the Mike Dunbar steambox design. I used it in two of his classes and it works great! (I also highly recommend his classes, some of the best vacations I've ever had--total immersion in building windsor chairs for a week-- and you end up with a chair besides!)

[harry strasil]

I wonder why he didn't use an elbow and orintate the steam opening at the bottom so the accumulated water goes back into the boiler like I did.

I use an ordinary cork in the fill tube in mine to prevent an explosion. and with both ends capped with only a 1/4" hole for a vent, I loose much less steam so I use less water to get the part steamed.

[Bill ThompsonNM]

From what I remember the steamer in his first class was more ad you describe, but for the long chair arms it made it harder to unload since it was a way off the ground . Since his "kettle " was plenty large it wasn't necessary to recover water. I think the part I liked the most was building it out of sched 80 pipe. I've even used sched 40 but it does deform over a few steam sessions.