Steam bending wood

Information Unlimited

Steam bending wood

by Information Unlimited

Copyright 2004

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Table of Contents
STEAM BENDING WOOD ..................................................................................................................................... 1 The wood........................................................................................................................................................... 1 Steam boxes..................................................................................................................................................... 2 Bending small stuff .......................................................................................................................................... 2 Bending planks................................................................................................................................................. 2 Length of wood and curvature at the ends................................................................................................... 3 Bending ............................................................................................................................................................. 3 Jigs and clamps ............................................................................................................................................... 4 Rules For Bending Wood................................................................................................................................ 4 Anatomy of a Bend .......................................................................................................................................... 4 Stock Selection................................................................................................................................................. 5

Table of Content

Steam bending wood

By David Smith

Wood is normally straight and unbending, but this is not always the case. Wood can be bent, some woods more so than others. When you steam wood youre softening the natural polymers which behave like thermoplastic resins, but you need a large amount of uninterrupted heat, and a free flow of steam to do this. Warning Have too much hot water on hand, rather than Even a short interruption in the steam flow will produce stresses in the wood that will prevent successful bending. The steam needed here is not under pressure, so the boiler is not under pressure, but it will contain several gallons of boiling water. You dont want to run out of steam. Green wood is best for bending, but youre not always going to get it. No real problem, you can have great success with kiln dried wood as well. One thing you want to avoid in your selection of wood for bending is wood pieces with grain runout, which will crack the work piece. Using a froe to split wood and a drawknife to size it is one way to get wood without grain runout. It's useful to soak your wood for a few days before bending it, so the moisture content rises, but to do the job of bending you need heat and moisture - that is, steam. The primary rule of bending wood is the length of time you steam the wood - one hour of steaming per inch thickness of wood. Just remember, you need an unbroken period of steaming to do the job. You can over steam as well as under steam wood. If you steam an inch of wood for an hour, try to bend it, and it cracks, dont think you haven't steamed the wood enough. There are several factors involved, which could explain the result. Its smart to have a piece of stock in the steam box thats the same thickness as the piece you wish to bend, and is expendable. Preferably this piece is from the stock itself. Steam it with the target pieces, and after the required steaming time, take the test piece out and try to bend it. If it snaps, then give your real piece about 10 minutes more. But no more than that - you can over cook the wood. Use timers, dont use wrist watches, or guess the time. These bent pieces of test wood may come in handy later on for art type projects - for large pieces an over size bird cage of wood supporting a bird feeder comes to mind.

The wood Generally its best to work with green wood - it bends easier than dried wood. Green wood is flexible to start with, but the board won't stay bent, so you need to steam it. In wooden boatbuilding, rot is the main problem, but steaming removes the tendency of green wood to rot. Boat ribs are typically made from steam bent oak, and will not rot in a well cared for boat.

Steam bending wood

Steam boxes Its not necessary - and in fact it's harmful to the bending process - to have a steam box thats absolutely airtight, that is, no places for the steam to leak out. You want steam to be flowing over, around and under the wood, finally working its way out of the box so fresh, hot steam can flow in. The important word here is flow. If you don't get a flow through of steam you wont get an even heating of the wood, and without an even heating you wont be able to bend the wood. Steam boxes can come in many shapes and sizes. You want one big enough so you can keep the wood off the bottom surface, the pieces separated from each other, and still get a good flow of steam around the wood. A box made of 2 x 8 pine boards will work just fine. One method of keeping the work pieces separated and off the bottom of the steam box is to drill matched holes through the steam box sides and run hardwood dowels through, to make a rack for the wood to rest on. The dowels hold your wood up off the floor and can keep the different work pieces separated, minimizing the amount of wood touching a surface. You don't want the box to be so big the amount of steam your boiler generates is too small to fill the box. You want a wet, steamy box just billowing steam. So the steam box has to be matched to the work, and the boiler sized to the box - and make sure you have plenty of propane in the fuel tank, plenty of water in the boiler, before you start.

Bending small stuff For small stuff like 1 by 5/8 by 6 foot long oak for ribs, you could use a 2 inch diameter piece of PVC. Fasten it on a 2x4 so it won't bend from the heat, and nail sides to the 2x4 so that the tube doesn't flatten. For a small boiler you could use a whistling tea kettle with the whistle and top taken off. A length of radiator hose can connect the kettle to a suitable reduction on the end of the PVC. For a heat source you could use a counter top electric burner.

Bending planks For steam bending something like a 15 foot long, 6 inch wide, 3/4 inch thick mahogany plank try a steam box built with 2 x 12 inch pine. For a boiler you could use a 20 gallon steel drum that was not used for toxic chemicals. The heat source could be a propane burner generating around 45,000 BTU of heat. Theres one at Ace Hardware Store that's an aluminum bowl on 3 legs with one burner about 8" in diameter. When the book says one hour of steaming per one inch of wood, thats one hour of a serious flow of steam with no interruptions. Let me repeat that, a flow of steam with no interruptions. You have to pick a boiler whose capacity will be sufficient for the steam time youre looking for. Because theres no need for pressure people have used a thin walled container such as a 5 gallon unused gasoline can for a boiler. Remember, if a boiler is too large you can always turn the heat down, but too small a boiler for the job will just give headaches. Never put the wood in the steam box unless you have a full boiler for full steam and the box can be completely filled with steam. Be absolutely certain you don't run out of water before the end of the steaming time. If you do, and are thinking of adding more water give it up - you'll just be making kindling of your work pieces. Best to stop the steaming process, let the wood

Steam bending wood

cool for 24 hours (yes, one day, it has to be that long) and try again with more water or a bigger boiler. One way to stretch the water is to have the steam box tilted at an angle so any condensation within the box runs back into the boiler. I should point out even this condensed water is boiling hot - its not a good idea to have a wood steaming setup that can leak on you, or an unclamped hose that can come loose and spray people with steam and hot water. Also, trying for the dumb setup reward is using unmounted boilers that can fall over, or unsafe burner setups. Most steam boxes have a door at the end to let you slide in pieces - and take them out when needed. For example, in ribbing a boat - something you'd like to do in a day if you can, you crank up the boiler and when the steam is up you put in your first piece of wood. 15 minutes later you can put in the second piece, and in another fifteen minutes the third and so on. Then when the first piece is ready, pull it out and bend it. When the first rib is clamped, the second piece of wood is ready, and so on. This allows you to do a great deal of work while avoiding over steaming, but requires multiple jigs and many clamps. The door serves another important function - to preclude cool air from entering the steam box and interrupting the steaming process. The door doesn't have to be solid - on a small steam box you could loosely stuff in a rag as a door. Remember, you want steam to flow through the box.

Length of wood and curvature at the ends There is practically no way you can cut a piece to exact length and expect to get a good curve near the ends. That is, if you need is a 3 foot length, and the wood is greater than, say, 1/4 inch thick, you should cut the piece 6 feet long and bend that. You can trim the wood to fit later. Cut the stock overlong because the shorter the stock the harder it is to bend. And if you cut it overlong, youll have a better curve near the final finished end - the last 6 inches of a 1 inch thick piece of oak will be dead straight, so if the curve must continue evenly right up to the end of a board use an over length board to start with. Depending upon the curve you need, you may have to resort to carving the curvature out of the end of the wood, and should size it with that in mind.

Bending Assume you have the wood heating and the jig is ready. Take pains to place everything so the operation of removing a piece from the box and bending it is a fast, smooth operation. Timing is critical. You have only seconds when the wood is ready. Take it quickly out of the box and bend it. Get a curve on the wood as fast as possible. If inserting the wood on the jig is complicated, pre-bend it with your hands if you can. On ribs for a boat - where there is a curve in 2 directions, take it out of the box, slip one end into a brace and bend that end, then bend the other end with your hands. Try to bend it more than the amount you need in the jig, but not too much more. Then slap the wood on the jig. You must get a curve on the wood immediately - within the first 5 seconds of the wood coming out of the steamer. Every second the wood cools it becomes less flexible.

Steam bending wood

Jigs and clamps One problem with bending wood is the long time (24 hours) the wood must stay clamped. You have to evenly clamp the board to the jig to get good results. When you steam bend a piece of wood, and have clamped it to a shape, you need to wait 24 hours for it to cool and set thoroughly. When you take it off the jig, that wood will spring back somewhat. If your stock has a natural curvature in the required direction to start with (take advantage of this whenever possible), you will get less springback. If you need a certain curve to the product, make your jig with greater curve. Its much easier to unbend wood that was over bent, than to try and put more bend in a cool piece of wood that wasnt bent enough. If youre bending pieces to be glued together to form a laminate, be sure the jig is the exact shape you need at glue time, for there is rarely much springback from well bent, glued wood. There are an infinite variety of jigs you can build. No matter what type you choose, you can't go wrong if you own a clamp making factory - you can never have too many clamps. Of course thats not possible so most people design the bending jig to use wedges to substitute for clamps. If youre bending wood greater than 1/2 inch thick the jig must be built very strongly: the amount of stress on it is quite high. Quite often people will use a metal strap along the outside of the wood as they bend. This helps to distribute the stresses along the length of the wood and helps to prevent cracking, very useful if you have grain runout at the outside edges

Rules For Bending Wood Even with a severe bend, rejects should not exceed 10% with proper stock and the correct equipment. Although wood bending is in part an art, its been done by many woodworkers over many years. When wood is steamed (high moisture and high heat), the plastic range in compression is extended and becomes extremely large (up to ten times the dry range). On the other hand, steaming does not affect the tension properties, that is, wood compresses but it doesnt want to stretch. Steaming does cause an overall loss in strength, so keep the steaming time to a minimum.

Anatomy of a Bend Consider a flat piece of wood 10 inches long and 1 inch thick. When this piece is bent, the outside of the arc will be longer than the inside. A flat piece of wood when bent can normally absorb a difference between outside and inside radius of 2 to 3% (without using end pressure or steaming) before breaking. This means a 1 inch thick piece, 20 inches long, could be bent on a 24.7 inch radius. The rule of thumb is that the radius cannot be less than 20 to 30 times the wood's thickness without steaming and end pressure. When we steam wood, it becomes more plastic in compression and is, therefore, able to accept more deformation without failure. However, wood does not become much more plastic in tension; the steam only increases plasticity in compression. It does take a moment or two for the wood to absorb the stresses being generated in
4 | Steam bending wood

bending. So the bend must be made relatively slowly. We must understand that the outside radius, which is in tension, is the limiting factor in any bend, even after steaming - although after steaming, the severity of the bends may, in certain cases, be increased without failure. So the key to severe bends is to control or reduce the tension in the outer radius. The most effective method is to push on the ends of the work piece, generating a compression force that will offset the tension force from the bend. How hard do we push? We know the outer (tension) radius cannot elongate by more than 3% before failure is likely. Therefore, we push hard enough to keep the outer radius at nearly a constant length - that is, its length when it was flat. Traditional method is the use of a clamp or bar, or a variation of this idea, with the distance between the end blocks exactly the length of the piece. If there were play between the end blocks and the piece to be bent, it is likely the 3% elongation limit would be exceeded and failure would result. In fact, short miscut lengths are the second most frequent cause of bending failure, the leading cause being poor material selection for bending stock. The third cause is improper moisture content. In practice, there are two correct ways to cut the ends of the stock so it will fit between the block: Flush and bevel.

Stock Selection The U.S. Forest Service has tested 25 hardwood species for relative bending quality. The best 17 woods are shown here. This ranking is the results from one evaluation; variation in the results can be expected from tree to tree and site to site. White Oak Hackberry Red oak Chestnut oak Magnolia Pecan Black walnut Hickory Beech Elm Willow Birch Ash Sweetgum
Steam bending wood | 5

(Best)

Soft maple Yellow-poplar Hard maple (Worst)

A further test of 20 different white oak trees showed the specific gravity (or density) and the rate of growth had no effect on bending failure. Likewise, the amount of end pressure (in excess of that required) was not related to the number of bending failures. (In other words, a piece that is going to fail will fail even if additional end pressure is exerted.) However, bending quality was related to certain strength-reducing defects. Cross-grain wood is more likely to break than straight grain. The rule of thumb is the grain should slope no more than 1:15 along the piece. Occasionally, there can be "local cross grain" (near a knot, for example) that can result in failure. A special form of cross grain is the interlocked grain, which is especially weak. Knots are surrounded by distorted grain and represent weak areas. Shake is a separation within the wood parallel to the annual rings. This separation encourages shear failures. The pith (or exact center of the tree) is very weak, and failures are likely in any stock from that area. Surface checks, due to improper drying conditions early in drying, are small separations in the wood. In bending, they can result in small bumps or slivers. Brash wood is probably found in all species and results in very short (along the grain) breaks rather than longer slivers. Wood that is exceptionally light in weight, compared to the average for the species, is especially prone to brashness. Brashness can, therefore, be a natural phenomenon. On the other hand, brashness can come from overheating wood, from decay, or from an earlier flaw. Decayed wood is weaker than normal wood, even if the decay has not progressed very far.

Steam bending wood