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Question about "bending" wood
Brax:
To bend wood you need steam. Lot's and lots of steam. In cedar strip canoe building we use an abs pipe to hold the wood and direct the steam into it from a kettle. These are just thin strips though. The glue in plywood won't stand up to this treatment.
I've also worked for a company than made the frames for laminated (plywood) circlehead windows. The plys are placed on a curved form during glue-up and clamped in place during the kiln drying phase.
You're not going to bend plywood of any significant thickness after the fact.
babydickonboard:
well, i don't know if this would work for you, but when i was building the transition to my skateboard ramp, it was nessesary to find a process of bending all of the sheets of plywood. what i did, was for the first layer, i used 3/4" plywood and cut a whole bunch of 1/4" deep noches into it. (its called keefing or something similer.) then for the next layer i used 1/2" plywood, and keefed it like 1/8" and soaked it in water all day long. for the final layer, i skipped the cutting process (which leaves slightly noticible bumps) and let the plywood soak all day. I then put an increasing amount of wieght onto the center of the board, allowing it to bend slowly of the course of a day or two. This will give the final layer a completly smooth curve, while the pieces behind it give it strength.
i think it will be impossible with a single 10 ply piece of plywood tho.....
NoOne=NBA=:
For a long single arch, "kerfing" is a good method.
It allows the wood to bend, but won't allow it to bend tightly.
For intricate curves, I would go with a substructure covered with a single piece of very flexible facing.
That is the easiest method of getting multiple curves.
The nice thing about this method is that you get the strength of the substructure, without the hassles of multi-ply gluing.
You would have to build a jig for multi-ply gluing anyway, so why not just make it part of the finished product, rather than throwing it away when you are done?
Boz:
Kerfing is what I saw with the plywood at the grocery store. The arches were actually part of the remodel they are going through and they were outside about 10-feet off the ground (something for people to walk through as if they were doors). This is the method I used to create the rounded corners on my cardboard control panel mock-up. I anticipated this would probably take a lot more effort and thought with wood, but I guess I didn't know just how much.
I've thought about a couple of ideas and these don't seem too bad from my point of view, though, again, I haven't a clue how hard it would be.
Option 1
Instead of kerfing, I could cut very explicit triangle cuts as far into the plywood as possible without cutting through. Then I could bend the outer most "ply" to my liking. The downside is that although it seems like it would be structurally sound, I would still end up with multiple flat faces in a faux curve.
Option 2
I could buy a couple of big blocks of oak from one of the specialty stores here in town and cut my curve to size as necessary. The downside to this is the amount of wasted wood for the cut and the REALLY expensive prices for blocks like I'm talking about.
Option 3
Block the curve out as much as is possible, fill with wood filer or fiberglass filer, then apply a sheet of oak laminate. The downside of this is that I don't even know if you can stain a sheet of laminate, plus, the grain would be significantly different from the oak plywood.
None of these options really appeal to me. I'll likely spend more time on getting these curves right than I would building and wiring the entire control panel.
Orclord:
http://www.ipirti.com/product_dev_16.htm
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