I welcome fans to work with natural materials, today we will consider how to make a stylish bench from curved boards. This method of bending wood is quite ancient and it is successfully used by craftsmen today. For a tree to become elastic, it needs to be welded or strongly heated with steam. In this state, the wood is clamped into molds, and after cooling and drying, the wood continues to hold the shape that you give it. The made bench is assembled from boards by gluing, everything looks quite original. If you are interested in the project, I propose to study it in more detail!
Materials and tools used by the author:
Material List:
- suitable boards (or a tool for cutting them);
- plywood (for templates);
- good wood glue;
- oil or varnish for wood.
Tool List:
- a special steam engine with a sleeve (for steaming wood);
- staple (the author uses thick glass);
- a chisel;
- a circular saw;
- a hacksaw;
- drawing tool;
- tape cutting machine;
- a planer;
- clamps;
- a hand circular saw.
Bench making process:
Step one. Patterns
First of all, we need to make templates, according to which we will bend the boards. The author used plywood as a material, marking everything out on paper, cut out the details with a jigsaw and modify it on a milling machine. In addition, in the templates you need to drill holes with which we can clamp the boards with clamps.
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Step Two We bend and collect the legs
Well, then we take the right amount of boards and put on a special steam sleeve, along this sleeve the boards are heated with steam. The temperature inside the steam hose is around 95 ° C.
As soon as the boards warm up to an elastic state, they can be clamped into templates, the board is fixed with clamps. If the board has cooled down, it is best not to use it, as the wood may delaminate.
At this step, the author collects the legs for the bench, all joints are assembled on wood glue.If you doubt the quality of the glue, it is better to use furniture dowels together. Of course, the author’s design was quite complicated, and all parts require careful adjustment. But everything should be assembled relatively easily if the templates are made exactly the same.
After assembly and drying, we eliminate the defects, the author goes through the product with a planer to level the planes. As a bracket for curved and other parts, the author uses a piece of thick glass.
Step Three Seat Parts
The seat itself is also made of curved planks, which are installed "edge". To bend boards into bizarre shapes, the author made a special clip from the wheels of a skateboard.
Well, then everything is the same as at the beginning, we warm up the boards and bend them to the desired shapes.
Step Four Assembly and finishing touches
We assemble the bench, everything is glued together again with carpentry glue. On the edges of the bench between the boards there are struts made of darker wood, nor glued either. Often, when assembling such complex structures, you have to improvise, so that the pattern will be different each time, but this is its own highlight. We tighten everything with clamps and leave to dry.
After drying, we cut off the excess with a hand circular saw, work with a plane and grind the edges of the bench with sandpaper. That's all, now homemade ready, carefully soak all the bench seats with oil, wax or other impregnation to your taste. The bench is ready, the design turned out to be quite interesting, however, it is better not to wet such a bench in order to avoid deformations that the adhesive joint is unlikely to withstand.
The project is completed on this, I hope you liked the homemade work, and you found useful thoughts. Good luck and creative inspiration, if you decide to repeat this, do not forget to share your ideas and homemade things with us!
