Woodworker's Guide to Bending Wood Paperback / softback - 2009

Enhance Your Woodworking with the Beauty of Curves For many furniture-makers, the art of bending wood presents a daunting challenge, so they stick to what they know: straight lines, flat planes and right angles. But with just a little woodworking knowledge and a few basic tools, anyone can create beautiful designs with graceful legs, a serpentine front, a winding base, and the delicate curvature that takes ordinary work and makes it extraordinary. In this comprehensive book, Jonathan Benson, a prefessional furniture builder, demystifies the secret to bending wood and presents four different methods for bending everything from green wood to veneers. Best of all, these bending techniques can be mastered by woodworkers of all skill levels. Inside the Woodworker's Guide to Bending Wood, you'll learn everything you need to know to make sinuous designs, including: -The history of bending wood -A checklist for choosing the right bending method for the job -Basics of bending green wood; bending with heat, water, steam, and a microwave oven -Cutting & bending laminations -Using a vacuum press -Bending panels with veneers And, to ensure you've mastered the expert information provided, you'll find a series of Demonstration Projects and Step-by-step exercises that, when followed, will result in the construction of a beautiful shaker box, a recurved bow for archery, a rustic chair, the body of a guitar, and bent panels for a table and pedestal.