wood steaming

[Bruce Nicholls]

I have used a boat building method of putting the length of timber in a bag (made of a poly-tarp or similar) with one open end. Push the pipe from the steam generator (kettle, wallpaper stripper or whatever) down the bag to the closed end. Loosely tie up the open end round the pipe and start the steam. the timber can be gradually bent round a former of the correct shape as it softens. When fully bent turn off steam clamp up and allow to cool. The advantage is that the timber is not cooling while taken from steam box to former and it takes the guesswork out of how long to steam.