Steam Bending

I have a parallel thread going on airstreamforums.com, but I wanted to post here as well. Although the holiday was a wash out, my wife felt better and we had a very nice weekend plus a huge pot of turkey soup. Nothing is better than home made turkey soup after a day out.







Saturday we went into Boston and walked around China town and Newbury street. We ate at Chio Chows in China town, which if you have not been is a wild place to visit for Dim Sum. I had not been in years and took my daughter to try Dim Sum, which is served in small portions from steam carts. This is authentic Chinese food versus the american version, so not all items looked familiar to my daughter. Both her and my wife tried the dumplings, and soft noodles. The soups were a bit odd but the deserts were even odder, but I liked them anyhow. Red bean sweet rolls went over well with tea.

Sunday I started working on a form to bend 1/8 Russian birch plywood over. This run of bent birch will be used to rebuild the overhead cabinets and I'll repeat the process to built curved sided cabinets, bed frames and under sink cabinets. I'm also going to redo the front cabinet and side four door chest at some point. The first step is to learn how to steam wood and bend it over a form.

I started out with a 6" test piece in a steam box built from a 70s era solar hot air collector. I took out the center panel and placed blocks inside for the plywood to sit on. Then I sealed it back up and placed an insulated moving blanket over it to keep the heat in since the box is very slim and heat loss could turn one end into just water drops. The steam was generated by a big pot of boiling water placed on a propane camp stove. I did this first run outside and it went alright, but on the last run I moved the box into the basement.

The first lesson I learned was that I needed more clamps, so off to HD I went. I also picked up some blue tape and some glue.

After steaming the birch for about 45 minutes, I moved the ply wood over to the form, which bent very easily. All the clamps in place and I'll leave it there for a couple of days. I'm not sure how long I should leave it there, but I am in no rush.

From what I can tell, this is sthe same process that Airstream used back in the 50s. The other one is using a router with a pattern to cut the door opening. I'll have to mess around with my router and a collar to get it right. The other one that I did not mention yet is a flush cutting bit for the router. I used one to create the form and also to make the pattern off of the original cabinet. Very cool bit.

Here are some pictures.