How to Bend Wood

Mar 18

How can you bend wood to your will? Try bent lamination. Bent lamination is the process of gluing together multiple thin pieces of wood in a specific shape. Because the wood is thin, it will bend a great deal more than a thicker board. In my case, I made a curved hanging wall cabinet. Here are a few things that I observed during the process.

Form is Everything

Make a good quality form and your boards will thank you for it. I created a form out of MDF. I used the thickest boards possible to get the extreme curve that I wanted, which was about 1/16th of an inch. Your boards are going to contour to the shape of your form so spend a lot of time making a good one.

Clamping Pressure is Vital

For my hanging wall cabinet, I created a curved form and then an interior piece that applies even clamping pressure to the laminated boards. Well, I frankly did not do a good enough job and had some gaps that did not allow for even clamping. I ended up scuttling the interior bent lamination form and using a billion clamps instead. The result was still a very nice cabinet, but having a quality form with good clamping pressure would have make my life much easier.

Think about Shape

Take in account the shape when designing. I wanted some shelves and dividers in my hanging wall cabinet. I opted to use dados for the joinery, cut using a router. Unlike a traditional square or rectangle wall cabinet, you can’t cut the joinery before assembly. This is something to keep in mind to ensure you have enough working space for whatever woodworking tools you are going to use. I made my cabinet so I have enough clearance for my palm router. If my cabinet was narrower, I would have likely had to use hand tools to cut the dados.

After my bent lamination cabinet was formed, I went to town on the design aspect. This is usually my favorite part of a project. You are seeing me design on the fly. I generally do not have a super detailed plan for a woodworking project before I film its creation. I dive in and change my mind when I need to. After the shelves were added, I went back and forth on the design of the drawers. I decided to forgo anything with a crazy shape and fill the entire space with figured walnut. I wasn’t sure what handles to use. After rummaging around in my junk drawer I found a piece of 1/8” thick brass. This worked out perfect! I made some nice bar handles that I think helps to balance the entire hanging cabinet visually.

The whole piece was finished with four coats of Osmo oil, one of my favorite finishes. It gives a beautiful, close to the wood look.

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