Steam bending Walnut
 

Greetings. I am in the process of building two wall sconces for a 'box window'
addition with window seat I just added onto my house. The sconces will have a
framework of walnut with thin ribs of walnut joining together the vertical
framework. I want to steam these strips of walnut and clamp them to dry so
they will be nearer the shape they should be after the sconce is finished. The
strips are about 18 inches long and about 3/16 thick by 1/2 wide. I have no
proper stea,er so I'm putting half of each over a pan of boiling water until I
can bend it enough to get the whole strip bent around the inside of the pan and
letting it steam for a few minutes. Do I need to let it steam longer than say
5 minutes? Does it hurt if the walnut strip ends up below the water level?
Finally, after removing them from the pan I am going to clamp them around a 1/2
round wooden disc that is the size of the finished product. Should I make this
form smaller or will the walnut maintain it's shape once removed. How long
should I leave the strips clamped to the form to dry? Hour, Day?? Read the
group daily and have learned a lot. Regards, Mike in Arkansas

Steam bending Walnut
 

On Wed, 17 Mar 2004 02:13:43 GMT, "Michael Daly"
wrote:

On 16-Mar-2004, (JMWEBER987) wrote:

I have no
proper stea,er so I'm putting half of each over a pan of boiling water until I
can bend it enough to get the whole strip bent around the inside of the pan and
letting it steam for a few minutes. Do I need to let it steam longer than say
5 minutes?

Download the booklet on steaming form Lee Valley:

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.asp?page=31161&category=1,45866,45867&abspage =1&ccurrency=1&SID=

This will give you the info on time and technique.

You can make a steam box easily - some folks use insulation, either rigid
styrofoam or foil-backed stiff fiberglass. Make sure you have a good head
of steam and open one end of the steam box a bit to allow good flow of
steam over the wood. You can use a kettle, but wallpaper steamers are
better (there's one made by Wagner that's popular for steaming).

When I have needed to steam bend, which is not very often, I have
rented a wallpaper steamer from a tool rental place.




Rodney Myrvaagnes J36 Gjo/a


"We have achieved the inversion of the single note."
__ Peter Ustinov as Karlheinz Stckhausen