First steam bent deck. and a question.

[jletsche]

Bent my first ash deck today. After a three day swim in the pool and an hour in the steam box, it went pretty smoothly, except I needed to a quick trip to the band saw when the piece didn't fit in the jig. oops.

How long does it need to stay in the jig to retain it's shape?

Since I need both decks, inner and outer gunnels, I figure I will use the same jig for all.

This is for a 1944 old town HW.

 

[Andre Cloutier]

Lots of fun sawing steaming, hot wood huh! Leave it at least a week, more if you can, then you will be sure it has stabilized a fair bit. I would take it out and install it the same day, then you can be sure it wont move. Did you make a press, or bend it over a curved jig and clamp it

 

[jletsche]

I didn't use a press, I used two wedges to hold the wood in place, then a large bar clamp to get it started. Once it was bent enough, I used the two big C clamps to bend it the rest of the way. At the end, the wedges did not really hold the board tight to the form, so I used two more C clamps to finish the job. Except for the small problem with the width of the wood, the whole process went very smoothly. It's really cool to see a chunk of wood like that just bend without snapping.