How to bend
Wood At Home
Steam Bending Wood, 1" Thick Kiln Dried Ash | Stagecoach Tops
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the top for this mountain stage is what
I was requested to bend the bows for and
this is the pattern and measurements
that I was sent to the right are
pictures of an original coach still on
display so the first thing I needed to
do was make the form that I could bend
the bows around this is just some scrap
2x6 material that I had around it
doesn't have to be very fancy and you
see here the inside radius needs to be
seven and three-quarters of an inch so I
took a piece of plywood and I made a
pattern that I could pattern off of for
the end of these two by sixes
now these bows need to be 55 and 3/4
outside so I'm gonna undersized this to
accommodate the thickness of the bow
itself and to allow for spring back when
I actually bend these bows at least two
by sixes aren't quite wide enough as
they stand by themselves so I'm gonna
add a little piece to each end for
additional depth in the radius these
forms don't have to be pretty they just
have to be structurally strong enough to
withstand the pressure when the wood is
being bent
in the center I'm going to add a steel
post that I use to adapt this form to my
bending press so when I build my press I
designed it to accept a variety of forms
and this is just one of the styles that
I use on this press now if you watch my
video on steam bending sheep wagon bows
this is the band that I used when I bent
those bows underneath this band I have
some pipes welded at different positions
I'm going to bring my cable ends in to a
closer position and attempt to use this
band when I first Bend my said a bolt
we're gonna find out eventually in this
video why this was not the best idea now
the plans called for one-inch thick ash
inch and 3/4 inch wide to make these
bows so I selected the lumber I wanted
to use and went ahead and build it to
size
now the order was for 15 bows so I
needed to go through and decide which
ones were actually bendable the rule of
thumb is less than one inch of run-out
per foot in the grain this piece you can
see here is way sharper than that so I'm
actually going to take and recheck this
one set it aside but most of these you
can see the grain run-out is about right
at a foot so I'm going to consider these
bendable and I'm going to use a quarter
inch roundover bit and just take off the
sharp corners
the boiler that I use for steaming is
coal-fired and it has about a 20 to 25
gallon capacity I take general household
ammonia non sudsing and I'll add about 2
cups to the boiler itself this will add
to the penetration of the steam when
they are in the steam tank when I begin
to show signs of steam I'm going to load
up 3 and Bend 3 at a time as this begins
to build pressure you can see some suds
starting to come out around the door I'm
going to go ahead and put a center mark
on my form so I know where to line up my
banding then from my notch that shows
the center on this band I'm going to
measure back three and a half feet
because the board's I'm going to bend
initially are 7 feet so at these marks
I'm going to clamp boards on the band to
act as stops and remember when we're
bending wood everything has to be
compression so I don't want these bows
when they come out of the steamer to be
able to stretch but I want to keep them
contained so that all the bending goes
into compression this board on the right
I'm going to clamp down fairly securely
then I'm going to take one of the extra
pieces as a yardstick so to speak and to
put it in to show me about where the
location of my board on the Left needs
to be this one I'm not going to clamp
securely until I actually put the bows
in getting ready to be bent
now I always bend under pressure which
helps force the steam and the moisture
in and since this material is kiln dried
ash one inch thick I've allowed it to
cook for two hours now I'm ready to go
ahead and get some bent the block on the
Left does not yet clamp securely so I'm
going to go ahead and tap it into place
so it butts up against my boughs now you
can see where I have five clamps on each
end of these bows
so while this is bending I've got the
camera moving around I'm a little jumpy
so I apologize for the quick movements
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the left side came up fairly straight
but the right side was a little behind
like just to come along and brought it
into position so when I finish this been
digested both sides to where they were
fairly straight up and down and here it
actually looks like they bent pretty
well to get these off the form
eventually I need to have some framework
to contain them in so I click built
biceps these bows have now set for a
couple hours and cooled down so I can
take them off and put them into this
little framework that they're gonna dry
in now through this short little clip
I've actually stopped it twice to let
you see that the amount of spring go
back was about four inches overall two
inches on each end right here you can
see it's standing up I have to push it
down about four inches
and here once again
so I could just end the video and show
you this and say everything went really
well and that's how you do it the truth
is that isn't so I looked at these and
there were a couple of bows that had
these stretch marks on the outside of
the band so I went back to examine why
as I measured between my two blocks I
see the blocks had stretched out been
pushed out about an inch so my five
clamps were not sufficient to keep this
wood contained also my four inches of
spring back needed to be accounted for
so I'm going to take my form off knowing
that I'm going to now over bend I need
to over bend about two inches when I do
that I don't want this sharp corner to
put a crease into the bow so I'm going
to take and round this corner off on
both ends of my form
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another thing I'm going to change is the
style of the band I have some bands that
I use when I bend to inch stick part
wood and there I've welded ends on on
each end of two by quarter inch angle
irons I'm going to use these bands now
to bend the next set of bows and these
will not be allowed to stretch also the
pulleys on my press they change the
direction of the cables I'm going to
drop that down so that my direction of
inward pull is lowered I also keep some
1/8 inch banding handy as quick shims to
accommodate for any variation in length
so if my wood is a little short I'm
going to put whatever I need in to shim
it out to keep it as tight as possible
against these ends
so now we're going to try this once
again
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again if you've watched my other steam
bending video you know that this press
runs at 1800 to one reduction so it
moves fairly slowly
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so as the ends of these bows start to
get close to vertical my cables are
pulling more upward than inward so I'm
actually going to stop it
and I'll use some come along to have a
direct end pull I'm going to put a
come-along on each side and actually
bring these in to over bend them to
compensate for the spring back
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now you can see I have them over bent
but I'm gonna take a carpenter square
and actually adjust these so I have two
inches on both sides over bent this
should allow for the two inches of
spring back that that's going to occur
the right side initially I had three
inches the left side was not quite two
inches so I made a couple adjustments to
where we had two inches on each side
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so is the finished Bend this is what I
ended up with after these have set for
at least two hours I'm going to take
these off and put them into the
framework we'll look at them closely and
see if they're going to work now if you
look at the top of these bows you can
see that they actually kind of recurve
backwards a little bit we're gonna
address that in a minute so now they go
into the framework with hardly any
downward pressure at all they turned out
really well
these no longer showed any sign of any
stretch marks
having the solid ends made all the
difference now this is the recurve on
the end of the bows since there's still
moisture in these I can take them and
actually put them in a vise and
straighten this back out by causing the
the inward fibers to stretch back out
this wood is still fairly elastic and
pliable at this stage
so this is our finished product
these actually add some pretty nice
straight grain no buckling on the inside
no stretching on the outside we have our
fifty five and three quarter inch OD
that our pattern called for we are a
one-inch thick an inch and 3/4 wide
bending three at a time we have almost
five and a half inches of width that we
bent at one time here we have a second
set of bows and we finally ended up with
all five so we had our 15 bows I had
three that I had rejected because the
run out was worse than the 1 inch and 12
inches there were some wavy grain and
these were not ideal so just for
demonstration purposes I put these three
and the steamer and put them through the
same process as I did all the rest just
to show that you don't always have to
have perfect ideal lumber if you have
the correct banding and that they are
contained properly even less than ideal
kiln-dried hardwood lumber will Bend
this run out was in about five inches
and even the wavy grain bent
there was no stretching on the outside
and these actually were usable bows I
didn't include these bows in the order
of the 15 I just bent these for example
purposes so these are our 15 bows thanks
for watching
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you
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