What do you use to provide steam for steambending?
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Replies
Hot water
I use a propane fish-cooker, which I changed over to Natural gas. My boiler is ~5 gallon pressure pot for canning. I have used copper tubing with pipe insulation to carry the steam to the chamber, which can be PVC or wooden box, or even one of the best ideas that I have seen is to construct it with insulating foam.
All chambers will work better if they are insulated. Someone above suggested a camp stove, which can work if it is a really good big one, but still may not be sufficient for a large chamber, with much wood in it.
It is all about getting BTU's from the flame into the wood, all of the way into the core. While the cooking an hour per inch may work most of the time, too small a heat source may not make it, and a larger one might take less time.
I have a small hole drilled in the far end of my chamber where I can insert a thermometer. With a matching drill, I can insert the end of the tip into the middle of the wood. I may get myself one of those new ones that has a flexible probe, and sends a signal to a remote sensor that can be worn on a belt like a cell phone. Now that is my kind of cooking.
What are you getting ready to bend?
Didn't you mean VERY HOT water?
Chris,
you asked what I use to provide steam for bending. I have found that a great source of steam is WATER, when you add HEAT. So if you put a tea kettle on the stove, and turn the stove on, AND PUT WATER IN THE TEA KETTLE, you will get steam. Of course, if you are at a high altitude, it is a bit more of a problem, but there rarely do steam bending on mountain tops.
Just rig up some simple way to get the steam to your box, which should be as close to the stove as possible, (( Because the steam cools along the way and turns back to water if it has to travel too far.) Just rig up a wood or plywood tube (square or rectangular in form. Put the business end of the teapot so it goes into one end of the wood pipe. The other end of the wood pipe is your staem box.
You can look up steam bending on the web. You will get a few million hits. There are an enormous number of books which cover it, although it is possible that Canada has banned them. We can stilll get them here in the US.
My answers are always too long. My short answer to your question is WATER AND HEAT.
Mel
Tage frig book has good instruction for a steam box -
SA
moisture does help
ron
I bought a turkey fryer on Craig's List for $20. Never had been used.I made a lid using 1/2 polypropolene with a hole for a flexible pipe that fed a 4 inch diameter pvc pipe. I used a propane tank from my fish house heater.
My fist try at bending was a couple of weeks ago. It was 20 degrees (F) and snowing. I wrapped a couple of sheets around the 4 inch pipe for a little insulation. I doubt that it helped much. A big cardboard box was used to shield the burner from the wind. I preheated the water by setting the pot on my wood stove in my shop.
The turkey fryer came with thermometer that I placed on the far end of the pipe. This gave me an idea of my heating progress. I bent some pieces for a childs shaker rocker. The thickest piece was 1 3/8 diameter. The wood was from a green ash I cut doen from my yard two years ago.
Next project: full sized rocker.
Bill
Gary,
Interesting post. Wetting wood does make it more pliable though (try soaking a thin piece of wood in cold water), but from reading what you said, heat has more of an effect. Steam, being a combination of moisture and heat, would be the ideal. Or would boiling the wood be better? You mentioned heating the wood over a fire, but I can see it being difficult to heat it evenly - perhaps steam is a better distributor of heat.
One plus for not using water is that you aren't adding moisture to the material, although the steaming process actually dries the material. When choosing woodl for steam bent boat frames, I always chose air dried or even nearly green white oak which measured 12 to 15% moisture content (MC) or more. After steaming the requisite 1 hour per inch thickness, letting the frame set over-night, I sometimes remeasured the MC and it was few percentage points lower than before I put it into the steambox.
I agree that moisture content is helpful, but it can also present problems related to drying. See Bruce Hoadley's "Understanding Wood."
I use a stainless steel can from a milking machine, holds about five gal. Heat is froma gas grill.
Tom
Chris,
I use a turkey fryer. Don't try to heat up too much water at one time. Be sure and use air dried wood. The failure rate goes up significantly with kiln dried. I have done some pretty tight radii. The key is to use a bending strap. Check out Michael Fortunes short video on fww web site.
Dan
Had good luck for small length sticks with a common steem machine to clean the house. Did a childs oak rocking some time ago using one with good results. Steam into a big old plastic bag with a vent for several hours,,
I have made a few archery bows.. NO EXPERT on the subject.. I made a form and just soaked the wood in water. Same form and laminated together with glue in the final form.
Good reply.. AND heat also seems to harden the wood!
... Wetting wood does make it more pliable though.. I agree but not for all woods I have used. I think Ash and Hickory work with just water.. Not sure if Oak does?
I use a brand new 5 gallon gas can that has never seen gasoline. I attach one end of a radiator hose to the spout of the gas can and the other end of the hose attaches to the steam chamber/box. I fill the gas can with water, place it on a propane fired burner, variously called a turkey fryer or crab cooker, turn the flame on high and wait for the steam to develop.
I use a six inch square aluminum tube for a steam chamber. I found it at the Boeing surplus store. It's about six feet long and the walls are 1/4 inch thick. A big overkill, but it will never rust or decompose from moisture. I've also read of people using schedule 80 PVC, which is heat resistant. It is pricey, but will work as well as the aluminum.
Chris,
If you're going to steam near an electricity source (eg in your shed) a wallpaper stripper machine is a good steam source. I have one that cost just a few quid and consists of, essentially, a large electric kettle with a couple of bendy pipes and various nozzles/thangs for applying the steam to the wall. It does a good job of supplying plenty of steam to a steam box. Lee Valley do one that looks just like an electric kettle but with a hose from its nozzle rather than a pouring spout.
You can also strip wallpaper with it when the ladywife becomes insistent that the back bedroom be redecorated.
They are quick to boil and will keep steaming even when topped up carefully with small amounts of water, through the access lid.
If you seal the steam box and it is reasonably well insulated (I made mine of 3/4" ply, screws and bathroom sealant) the wallpaper stripper machine will supply enough steam to fill a volume at least 4 feet long by a foot square. You can tell there's enough steam when the vent hole at the far end from the inlet hole ejects a good steam-geyser rather than just hot water drip/ooze.
It helps to keep the parts within the steam if the inside of your steam box has batons or other means of raising the parts off the steambox floor a little. I put diagonal batons in mine, with various offset gaps to allow any condensed water to flow out. The inlet end of the steambox has a small foot, to tilt the box slightly downhill thus encouraging the condensation to run to the vent-hole end, where it has its own small drip-hole.
Make sure the access door at one end (usually the venting end) comes off quick, as you don't have that long to extract parts and get them to the pressing jig. My access door is just a square piece of ply with push-fit batons of softwood around the inward facing side.
The batons, which have a 1" square cross section, fit exactly into the square hole but have a 2 -3 degree slope on their outer edges, so that they jam in the hole when the door is pushed firmly home. The steam heats/swells the softwood batons further so this end-door doesn't fall out or pop-off. It has a couple of tabls so I can knock it out when ready to extract the steamed parts.
Lataxe
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