Bending Plywood

[Steve Jones]

The secret to bending plywood is to start with a sheet of bendy plywood!   If you go onto the Arnold Laver website there is a section 'Bendy Plywood'.
When I did the seat back in the RL I used a sheet of 4mm birch plywood.  The ends were curved round and I held them in the correct shape with a couple of pieces of wood that hooked over.  I then glued  1" wide strips of the same birch ply around the edges of the curved sections and clamped them on.  In other words the curved edges were laminated to 12mm thick.  When dry the restraining timbers were unhooked and the seat back retained its curved shape.  It will spread slightly but remains flexible. This is an advantage as when you fit it back in the car it holds itself snugly in place.
Laminating layers of birch plywood is by far the easiest way for the amateur to produce a strong curved timber.  Make the strips slightly oversize and when the glue has dried sand it down to the finished size.  The result is very pleasing, a bit like those plywood IKEA chairs!

Whilst I'm amazed that he's even heard of IKEA let alone know what one of their plywood chairs looks like (I don't), Malcolm has produced some excellent car bodies and components using the techniques above. When I built my Ulster he and I made the upper part part of the seat structure using his method as shown in the photos. The first shows every clamp I had holding the thing together whilst the glue dried, the second the finished component. All made out of various thicknesses of thin birch ply that I had left over from a previous job.


  Body Fitting and Paint 010.jpg (Size: 61.62 KB / Downloads: 177)


  Body Fitting and Paint 021.jpg (Size: 58.7 KB / Downloads: 176)

Steve