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Chemical bending- anyone done it?

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Stoker:
Back 30 some years ago. I was building wooden fly fishing nets. I steam bent the wood. My sister gave me an article on using Downy fabric softener with water. Don't remember the ratios. It did work. Might have to google it.   

mmattockx:

--- Quote from: GlisGlis on September 02, 2024, 01:32:06 pm ---Someone mentioned also bending with ammonia in the post about fuming.

--- End quote ---

Modellers building radio control aircraft from balsa wood have used ammonia to help with bending of thin sheets of wood for decades. It works very well and doesn't seem to negatively affect the properties of the wood, but they are typically only bending it across the grain to form cupped or rolled shapes and do not ever bend it in the manner we do with bows. Ammonia would also be very obnoxious to work with in the quantities needed to handle bow sized pieces of wood.

OP, I would say if you want to bend thin laminations you can do that without much trouble with heat or steam and by keeping your lam thickness thin enough to allow the bending to not overstress the pieces. After all, even the extreme hook FG recurves you see out there were almost always bent onto the form with the lams being dry and unformed before the layup.


Mark

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