THE ANSWERS

Post Reply | Watch this Post

Heya Peeps...

I see there alot of questions on this page and not many answers. So im going to try and help most of you. If your havn't alread been helped. It seems most of you have the problem of bending your timber. There are many ways in which to do this and what needs to be taken into acount it what you want your timber to look like when its bent. How much you want to bend it. And is there going to be anything to help it stay bent. Last one first. If your are trying to bend a sheet of plywood for a skate ramp. The your would use a meathod called crippeling. This is where you cut grooves in the back of your sheet about 3/4 of the way through and about 12mm (1/2") apart. The makes the sheet very floppy. You can then glue and SCREW, nails wont work here, this sheet to the sides and this will hold the curve. if you are trying to panel a curved wall you can sort of use the same techneque. because you have wall studs you should be able to bends the timber and srew it to the wall with some massive screws about 75mm (3") to hold your panels in place. panels are hard and i cant offer much more advise than that. The second question next. How much do you want to bent you timber. Say for a walking cane your realy cant bend a compleat hook on the end. You will have to do a bit more bush walking and find one with a nice bend into it. The stick must have the character. You cant take any stick and turn it into something you have to carefully select your material. If you think about bending anything your must think of what happens. On one side the timber must compress to twice its normal density and on the other side it must expand to half its normal density. thats if your where to bend a hook on the end of your stick. You cant bend timber more than a little bit or else it snaps in to ar fractures. As many of you people may heve found out. This is where steam come in. When your buy timber it is dried out or kilned. Timber it like a bowl of rike bubbles or rice puff or cocoa pops. whatever you call them. when they are dry they crush and break. but they dont expand or contract. in order to bend timber we need to soften it by filling the pores of the timber with a little bit of moisture.we do this by steaming. if your have small lengths of timber you can wrap it up in a wet towel and cook in in the microwave for some time up to your trial and error) or likewise in an oven with a bowl of water. if your timber doesn't fit in these things your can make your own steamer out of a length of PVC pipe and cork stoppers in the end ou can wrap you pipe in insulation fluff and tinfoil which will store the heat and cut down steaming time. you must have the steam hose comeing from your steam generator comeing into your pipe at one end and YOU MUST HAVE A DRAIN HOLE IN THE OTHER CORK. Or else you get massive pressure build up and it becomes massively dangerouse. This drain hole must be on the bottom of the cork and the whole steam tube must slope to this hole, so the water can escape and not drown your material. The steam generator is easy just find something you can boil water in and conect a hose to to get the steam into your pipe. keep the distance the steam has to travel to a minimum so it doesn't cool down befor it gets there. once you have steamed your timber you must have a jig made up to clamp you timber to make it hold it's shape. you maust let your timber dry for at least 4 days or else it will creep back into the shape it started. Another way on this site was to boil the stick. This is fine in some circumstances but you will stain the timber this way and it will be no good if you want to stain the timber. also you need to clamp the timber and let it dry. This is all fine if your timber will fit inside the PVC pipe. if it doesn't you may have to make up your own design of a steam chaimber. Like for skateboard decks. when they make these they use alot of thin peices of timber called plys. they steam these and hten the have a mould. they glue all these plys together (theres 7 in total) and sit them in the mould and press them. It takes about 5 tonnes for 1 week to press a skateboard deck properly and then when they are finished they must be cut, shaped, routed and sanded by hand. You could attempt to make one but keep in mind that the decks take a flogging, as you know because you would have to be a skater to want to make one, and they are made from canadian rock maple. This timber is scarce as hens teeth and very expensive. It is very hard and it takes skill just to shape a strait stick. Also keep in mind that the good boards have a ply of plastic in them which would need to be heated so it was soft enough to bent with the timber when it comes out of the steamer. PVA or your normal wood glue will not do when making a skateboard deck you will have to use a polyurathane adhesive that is water tolerant and would be suitable for the ourdoors.

I hope this information helps you people...

If anyone has any question about anything to do with wood i will gladly answer them if you care to e-mail me at munky_2u@yahoo.com.au