How to bend
Wood For A Boat
How to steam bend wooden boat frames
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I'm at the stoppage side of this little
twelve-and-a-half at the forward
bulkhead and this is going to be the
first frame that we're going to replace
in the boat now most of the framing from
here backs already been replaced these
frames are actually square edged so
they're square frames and they're put
down they're twisted into place and
that's okay but for the frame that we're
going to put in we're going to saw it to
a progressive bevel or a rolling bevel
and the reason why we're going to do
that is so that it will lay against a
plank and perfectly but the after face
of it will also lay against the bulkhead
I've transferred the degrees from the
inside of the boat onto a very light
little batten and then what I've done is
taken the batten and laid it on this
piece of wooden transferred the numbers
from the batten under the piece of wood
now I've got eight degrees here nine 10
11 12
goes up to 15 degrees I'm going to saw
that rolling bevel right here on a
little portable bandsaw alright we
feeding that frame right through the
bandsaw there now and you can see that
on glancing back and forth from the
numbers on the frame to the numbers on
the bandsaw so that I can keep the two
coinciding with each other so we've
pushed it right through there now
there's our frame I'm going to take it
over to a table here and clamp it down
and just take a little block plane and
plane that roughness off there that the
bandsaw has left no it's come out very
nicely now we're going to go over to a
steam box now I have a steam box but
it's considerably bigger and this just
steams it up much faster because it's
got a very small amount of space in it
this plastic works fantastic it cost no
money whatsoever I haven't invested any
money in materials it's got some
particular advantages that a steam box
doesn't have I can actually put my
fingers on the top of the bag while it's
steaming and feel the frame to see how
limber it's getting as I steam along
that way I can determine if it's ready
before
it's already remember it's like that
when I do pull it out I'm actually going
to pull it into a piece of pipe
installation so we can deliver it and
it's not going to lose its temperature
right away and we can handle it much
easier now that we've delivered the
frame into position we slide it down out
of the pipe insulation as quickly as we
can because it's cooling off very
rapidly it's a small piece so we bend it
into position and then we fasten it in
with sheetrock screws actually once
we've drilled a hole and we use fender
washers because the planking is so
delicate that what we want to do is
fasten it down into position very
rapidly and then later on we'll replace
those screws with bronze screws and
we've tied the head of the frame over
with a piece of line and the idea of
that is so that it will stay into
position once it's cooled off because
the boat itself is not trained in the
head to very well so that's the idea
there
