Good Books on Bending Wood

[Keith Starosta]

I'm about to take on my first official "commission" piece, and need some help getting started. A good friend of the family asked if I could replicate a drawer from an old dresser she found at a flea market. The drawer in question has a simple bowed face. I've never done wood bending of any kind, be it with forms or steam. I'm hoping I can get some input on good reference material that will help me shrink the wood-bending learning curve.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Regards,

Keith

[Jay Allen]

Do you have (or have access to) a band saw that is capable of re-sawing stock wide enough for the drawer front? You need to be able to cut the strips if you are considering the lamination process.

[Mike Cutler]

Keith

I found myself in the same situation you are in recently, and still am. I'm making a bowfront vanity for our bathroom.
When I researched steam bending there was a lot of info on steam bending boat parts, thin strips, making musical instruments, etc. Very little though on actual furniture.
I actually have Tage Fird's book series and there was only a short chapter on the subject.

Basically it distilled down to just a little trial and error on my part. I made a steamer, grabbed some different species of wood and went for it.
My observations were;

Spring back is unavoidable if the piece to be bent is solid,and spring back will vary with wood species and time in steamer. It's a little trial and error.

Tage Frid, and my boat building buddies are correct. It's an hour per 1/4" not an hour per 1". An hour per inch will allow you to bend successfully, but the spring back rate is less if you use Tage's 1/4" per hour.

Wood can be successfully bent and glued dry as a lamination, but the will spring back slightly when taken off the bending form.

If the laminations are steamed and bent first, then glued up, there is Zero springback. There will never be any pressusre on the glue to "straighten out" either. It's just a glue up now, with no internal stresses.

The wood really does need to stay on the bending form for 24 hours,a nd if you do a bent lamination, following steambending, leave the bent piece on the form for 24 hours minimum,a nd keep it stored and clamped on the form until you are ready to use it.

I used epoxy for my bent steamed lamination simply for the open working time.

Get curve on the steam bent piece as fast as possible. Clamp the center and the ends first, but not tightly. As you apply more clamps the wood needs to "grow" out the end of the form.

Bend the piece oversize. The middle section of the bend is the most perfect. the ends tend to want to straighten out.

The steamer I built is an 8"x8" box 72" long, built out of 2" foam baord insulation from home Depot. It consumes about 1/2-3/4 of a gallon per hour of water. It is propane fired and uses a turkey fryer stand as the heat source. I have a 1 1/2" PVC pipe as the "steam pipe". For temperature indication inside the box I used a meat thermometer poked through the foam insulation.

I did a steam bent lamination simply because the vanity top is granite and I have to conform to that radius edge on the front. The piece also provides the support for the front of the granite top slong it's radius.
The few guys I spoke with that actually build furniture told me thatthey steam bend the pieces first, then make the top flat work conform to the radius of the bend.( They have a really, really good idea of just exactly how much spring back there will be and accomodate it by over bending the radius and accounting for spring back to the final radius dimension. That's just a lot of experience I don't have.)

A pic of my steambending setup.

[Prashun Patel]

PBS just aired an episode of the NYWorkshop where Norm made a hat rack. They showed how to rig up a steam bender out of pvc piping.

You should also browse FWW online. They're running some front-page articles on steam bending. They're running a front-pager on "Adventures in Steam Bending". There are links and videos from there.

http://www.finewoodworking.com/item/30563/steam-bending-simplified

Last, consider doing a bent lamination instead of a steam bending. These can be quite strong and aren't that hard to do.

Oh yeah, and buy a lot of clamps

[Mike Cutler]

Keith Here is a pic of the bent laminations on the form. The form is a 32" radius bend. The bent piecs will be~ 60" along the outside of the radius. I'm probably only going to need a section~42" long.
When yopu do make your bending form remember that the radius of the form has to reflect the thickness of the material.
In this example, the piece(s) being bent will be 1" thick when finished and glued, and have an outside radius of 32", so the radius of the bending form is 31". The wood is soft maple.

[Mike Cutler]

Prashun

I don't recommend PVC Pipe for a steam bending rig based on my observation so far..
In the picture of my steam bending rig, you can see that the steam stack is 1-1/2" PVC plumbing pipe. It is bent like a bananna now, with no pressure other than the offset of the gas can to the steam box exerting force on it.

[Richard Dragin]

Steaming a drawer front, really? A few layers of bender board laminated with veneer would be a lot easier.

[Ben Franz]

Taunton sent me an email recently offering a new book on wood bending. Might be worth checking out:

http://store.taunton.com/onlinestore/item/wood-bending-made-simple-lon-schleining-071292.html

[Frank Drew]

I agree with Richard that steam-bending might not be the easiest, or most appropriate, method for a curved drawer front.

A bent lamination with thin veneers would probably be my first choice; some of the veneer dealers sell 1/16" veneer if you don't want to resaw your own; choose a face veneer that goes with the piece. With veneers that thin I haven't found springback to be an issue, although I like Mike's suggestion to steam pre-bend thicker laminations.

Another method to achieve a curved piece is by bricklaying; cutting out the "bricks" is pretty easy if you have a bandsaw, especially if the curve is regular (i.e. not serpentine or otherwise changing along its length). You can face veneer the smoothed and sanded finished shape either with a vacuum bag or by hammer veneering.

[Jim Tobias]

Keith,
I was in the same position as you a few months back and asked the same question here on the creek (needed suggestions as to how to best create bow front drawers). I got some very valuable suggestions (1st link below) and then used one of the suggestions in the project(2nd link below).
I did not steam bend or laminate but still want to try it sometimes.

Jim

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=107260

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=132411

[Cody Colston]

Keith,

Sorry, I can't recommend any books on the subject. Prashun's recommendation of the Fine Woodworking article would be mine as well.

FWIW, I've never steam bent wood but I have done quite a few bent laminations. That's the method I would use.

Build a bending form out of glued-up MDF, using the inside of the original drawer to lay out the curve. Saw the laminations to about 1/8", making them wider and longer than needed. Glue and clamp the stack down with as many clamps as you can get on it. You can use epoxy, plastic resin or even PVA glue. There will be very little springback. Trim the ends and rip the sides smooth to fit.

I do know that if you use PVC for steam bending, you will have to support it at regular intervals to prevent it sagging and also place something inside to raise the wood above the PVC so that steam can saturate it...that part is necessary with any type of steam enclosure.

I've also read that you must have everything ready once you take the wood out of the steamer. The bendable state does not last long once the wood begins to cool.

Good luck and let us know how it turns out and what you learned.

[Keith Starosta]

Thanks for all of the great tips, guys! I appreciate it.

I'm going to go ahead and order that FWW book, just as a documented reference. Plus, I like the fact that it has a video. Based ONLY on the limited research I've done to this point, I'm thinking that for this particular application, I'm going to avoid using the steam method. But, we'll see.

Thanks, again!

- Keith

[Peter Quinn]

Book suggestion: Woodworkers guide to Bending Wood, Johanthan Benson, Fox Chappel Publishing. Covers every method of bending wood ion depth and the appropriate uses of each.

My first choice for a subtle curve would be no bending at all, just get thick stock and saw the curve on the BS, but that has its practical limits.