That is involved, and steam at 100 degrees, not pressurised, has been found to be the best way to heat soften timber. The moisture has some softening effect but it is principally the heat It will then pretty much stay put in its new configuration if it’s held securely in place while the lignins cool down and reset.

The hollow rods to be shifted and slid past each other, achieving bends way beyond the unheated wood’s natural flexibility. The action of boiling steam happens to be just the right medium for temporarily softening the lignins, allowing To understand the steam-bending process, it helps to think of wood as composed of bundles of long hollow rods, surrounded by lignins which act as a kind of thermo-plastic glue. For the legs and under-stretchers though there is nothing as efficient, attractive, and economical as steam-bending them There are actually a great number of possible ways for making the seat itself, including carving it from solid, as well as laminating and kerf-cutting as illustrated here. Is the technique that woodworkers seem the most reluctant to try. For the purposes of this article, I am going to focus on the steam-bending aspect involving the legs as that

The legs are stiffened by the addition of smaller arches that fit between them and the centre underside of the seat. The stool consists of two legs in the form of continuous steam-bent hoops or arches, which are housed into matching radiused slots at either end of a curved seat. Wood-bending and shaping techniques, whilst also giving experience in several useful applications of the router. This project to make a stool was developed as a way of introducing students to a number of basic

Steam way to the woods