How to bend a 1/8" dowel at a 90 degree angle?

[dennis thompson]

I have been making some toys for my grandson. I need to bend some 1/8" dowels at a 90 degree angle ,I don't have any steam bending equipment.
Does anyone have any suggestions how how I might do this?
thanks

[Phil Thien]

Boil a pot of water on the stove. Place a full-length dowel over the pot, centered. Rotate it from time to time. Test/bend it as you can, returning it to the steam as needed. Once it is bent, remove it and clamp to preserve the bend.

Once it is dry, cut to length.

* I've never tried this. But it seems like it would be an easy/cheap place to start.

[John Vernier]

I think that method will work fine, but a lot of commercial dowels are not very straight grained, so a lot will break due to grain runout even if well steamed. Buy extras if you aren't making your own (and yes i know, how many people make their own 1/8" dowels?).

[Jim Finn]

I have bent 1/8" strips of oak by soaking in water for a day or two, running hot water on them and then bend to a form and then dry for three days in the form. This may also work for oak dowels.

[Peter Quinn]

Can you boil the whole dowel? Cut them a little over sized, then boil, bend around the form, let them dry? I've bent spoon handles on accident leaving them in a pasta pot for 14 minutes.....should work with dowels too?

[John Donhowe]

Depending on the dowel length, an easy way to steam bend is to wrap in a moist paper towel and microwave.

[John T Barker]

Soak it in Woolite. I have no idea how much of a radius it will allow but it should make it pliable. Years ago Fine Woodworking's back cover showed a wood apple with a wood arrow through an obviously much smaller hole than the arrow head. The fellow that did it had used Woolite, which is ammonia...I think.

[Joe Spear]

Woolite isn't ammonia. It is a relatively mild laundry detergent that doesn't even have any ammonia in it.

[Lee Schierer]

As others have noted, bending a dowel that was purchased may lad to a lot of frustration as you are likely to get more breakage than success. The grain in commercial dowels generally does not run full length. Even with soaking or steaming it is unlikely you will be able to get a 90 degree bend. I would suggest you find some maple of better yet recently harvested hickory or ash and split it with a Froe or chisel so that the split piece follows the grain. Then carefully sand the piece to 1/8" diameter before it dries and then boil/steam it and bend it to the shape you need. Let it dry on your form and you should have much better luck.

Or since you are only using 1/8" get some rattan for making baskets, soak it and make your bent pieces. Rattan will look almost like wood when dry and will bend more readily than wood od the same diameter.

[Bradley Gray]

What about using bronze brazing rod? I use it for hinge pivot pins an many other things - easy to make an abrupt bend - no steaming required.

[Perry Holbrook]

Dennis, would you mind posting your results? Lots of ideas here. I'd be interested in knowing what actually works.

Perry

[Mel Fulks]

The way I have heard Woolite described is it is very strong,and because of that, clothes don't need a lot of abrasive agitation. Never heard of it being used for wood bending but if FW said so it probably has some validity,and I'm not a big fan.

[dennis thompson]

Thanks for all the suggestions.
Results so far:
tried holding it over a boiling pot of water and I broke the dowel
tried the microwave idea and I couldn't get it to bend , going to try again and microwave it a little longer
I hadn't thought of the brazing rod, I did think of maybe using a coat hanger

[Bradley Gray]

coat hanger wire is smaller and can rust. The bronze polishes nicely.

[dennis thompson]

coat hanger wire is smaller and can rust. The bronze polishes nicely.
Tried the microwave idea again and broke another dowel.
I plan to try the bronze brazing rod idea. I know nothing about these rods but the Home Depot has them and they are "flux" coated. Do I need to remove the flux? If yes do I simply polish it off with a wire wheel?
Thanks

[Mel Fulks]

If you want wood ,maybe a green skinny branch would work. Try willow.

[Justin Ludwig]

Thanks for all the suggestions.
Results so far:
tried holding it over a boiling pot of water and I broke the dowel


How long did you steam it? If I can pot-steam a bow made of Bois d'Arc and bend the ends in a recurve using this method, I don't see how a 1/8" dowel would be a problem. Steam is for about 10 minutes under a lid or cover, rotate occasionally. It will feel rough as the pores and cells expand and protrude. Bend slowly. You may not get the full 90* on the first bend.

How tight is the radius?

[Bradley Gray]

I have cleaned off flux as you said but a welding supply store will have plain bronze in several sizes.

[Bill Huber]

I have cleaned off flux as you said but a welding supply store will have plain bronze in several sizes.

You can get brass rod at Ace Hardware in different sizes and you don't have to take the flux off, I use it all the time for hinge pins also.

[Don Orr]

In my very limited experience, to bend wood you need to bend slowly and support the outside of the curve with a strap of some sort like a piece of thin sheet metal. That's how you bend arms for Windsor chairs and such. Clamp one end of the dowel to the form, add the strap and bend the piece around the form as if they are one piece, and clamp in place to let cool and dry. Or use brass or bronze or rattan. Make sure you show us the results too.

[Anthony Whitesell]

Having never had to bend a piece of wood like this. Why just us steam? Why not place the dowel right in the hot water? I know it will take longer to dry afterwards, but won't it bend easier?

[roger wiegand]

Just to see if its possible I'd put the dowel in a pressure cooker for about 45 min, then take it out and bend immediately. If that works you can back off to a less extreme condition. If it doesn't then I'd look for plan B.

I have successfully bent 1/4" curly maple for banjo rims after running it in the autoclave (big pressure cooker) at the lab for an hour. I had about 20 sec of working time to get it clamped on a form before it would stiffen up again.

[Peter Quinn]

Having never had to bend a piece of wood like this. Why just us steam? Why not place the dowel right in the hot water? I know it will take longer to dry afterwards, but won't it bend easier?

Thats what I was suggesting above, don't steam, submerge and boil. The backing it up with something is a good idea, not sure how you would get a band around an 1/8" dowel, possibly some plastic tubing, you need something to keep the fibers on the outside of the curve from fracturing.

[roger wiegand]

not sure how you would get a band around an 1/8" dowel

A bending spring like those used for bending metal tubing might work well.

[Pat Barry]

How long is this dowel? How tight a radius do you need this rod bent to, in other words, what radius will you have on the form? It will be important to know these dimensions to determine feasibility. Do you have a picture or drawing of what you need the finished part to look like? Certainly the steaming / boiling methods described above are important to the success. I also echo the idea of some strapping to hold the dowel together during the bending and forming process..

[Bill Space]

With regard to steam bending, I think one advantage in some cases is that the wood is heated under some pressure, like 15 psi or so, and as such the steam will be at a higher temperature, something like 250 degrees, and I suppose penetrate the wood better.

This is what you would get if you put a piece in a pressure cooker for a while, as suggested above.

Higher heat and better penetration may lead to better results.

I never tried it...so only know what I think I remember from reading in the past...

[Chris Padilla]

I'd find a largish ziploc bag or tall plastic cup and cut pieces to fit and just soak it in water for a couple of days. It DOES need a form/support to bend against.

[Jason Roehl]

For bending, you could try getting some brake line of the appropriate ID from an auto supply store (should be just a few bucks). Steam the dowel, insert into the brake line and bend. Just a thought--never tried it myself.

[Myk Rian]

A lot of suggestions to put the whole dowel in water, so the question needs to be asked.
What length dowel do you need?

[John T Barker]

Woolite isn't ammonia. It is a relatively mild laundry detergent that doesn't even have any ammonia in it.

I said "I think" because I wasn't sure. As for Woolite being mild it seems to have lye and some acids in it...I don't think of that as mild. ?

[Tom Giacomo]

If you put it in a brake line and bent it how would you get it out ?

[dennis thompson]

After no success with steam/boiling water to bend the dowels I decided to follow up on the suggestion to use bronze brazing rods. I went all over town, Home Depot,Lowes, local hardware stores and couldn't find them. Then I went to Amazon and found them, 8 rods of 18" for $20 ( I probably spent more on gas running around town looking for the rods) to be delivered by tomorrow, Thursday. I'm thinking I can use them for many uses on the toy cars and trucks I am building...bumpers, door handles, side mirror holders,etc.., and they will a nice design touch to the cars. Not sure my 2 1/2 year old grandson who gets the cars/trucks will appreciate the design, but I will.:)
Again, thanks for all the suggestions

[Jason Roehl]

If you put it in a brake line and bent it how would you get it out ?

LOL. I didn't really think that far ahead. However, a few spins with a tubing cutter in a few places should allow one to remove it.

[Ted Calver]

Back when I was in school at SUNY ESF (early sixties), the lab was creating some amazing bent wood sculptures using ammonia. Just for kicks, it might be worth trying some bending using liquid ammonia (from a drafting supply company), following all recommended safety procedures, of course. I think I actually found the original research article.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ie50646a004?journalCode=iechad

http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplgtr/fplgtr190/chapter_19.pdf

[Alan Schwabacher]

Unless you live in a pretty cold place, liquid ammonia takes special equipment to handle: it boils at -28 degrees F, at atmospheric pressure. In the citation given, experiments were done under pressure, and worked much better than "comparable treatments with aqueous ammonia or gaseous ammonia at atmospheric pressure". Even the concentrated aqueous ammonia used for blueprints is 70% water.

And it's quite toxic.

[Ted Calver]

I wonder what would happen if you put the dowels in a container with blue print ammonia and put the container into a vacuum chamber, like the set up for stabilizing pen blanks? If you let 1/8" dowels sit in the solution for 15 minutes, then took them out and bent them in a form to dry? I changed out an awful lot of blue print ammonia running Ozalid prints in the old days. That stuff is toxic for sure. It was a test of how long I could hold my breath. The spent ammonia still worked great for fuming oak. It's getting hard to find these days. Everybody had their own large format printers.

[JUSTIN HUISENGA]

http://www.finewoodworking.com/how-to/video/video-demo-hot-pipe-steam-bending-introduction.aspx

You could try this.

[Dave Zellers]

The physics of bending cellulose fibers changes dramatically in the dense atmosphere and pressure of Jupiter and to a lesser extent Saturn, so you could contract with NASA to do this on a future rendezvous probe depending on your budget and time frame.

Or you could go with the brass.

As you pointed out, the brass is way cooler.

And probably cheaper.

Win, win.

[Ivan Wolder]

You have not specified the size that this 90 needs to be.Why don't you just cut a 90 from some squarish stock use a rasp,file,knife,teeth and some sand paper and make your own.I doubt it is that difficult,might take a little time,I think less than steaming,boiling whatever to bend something that does not want to bend.