As long as I’m on a steam bending kick here, I just wanted to share this really nice example of steam bending one of our canoes from Kevin (@prairiestonecustom).
About four years ago I created a new type of skin on frame canoe building system that uses a mathematical formula to determine the rib lengths and a free bent system to create the shape. It’s about twice as fast as building over a mold (because you don’t have to loft and build the mold) and a lot less expensive because as much as good bending oak costs, plywood costs a lot more.
Building this way also helps to avoid the rounding and hogging that I often see in skin on frame can use built over molds.
Finally it allows us to build the Canoes in dozens of sizes ranging from very small pack Canoes to medium size tandems, and because the shape doesn’t require any permanent thwarts, they can nest together like Russian dolls for storage and transport.
My only concern was whether or not people were actually going to be able to accomplish the free bending?!
4 years in it seems like as long as people are willing to spend the money on good bending Oak and follow the instructions carefully we’ve had very few problems with bad shaping.
Kevin here managed to get away with some air dried oak that he soaked for a week prior to bending. Normally I discourage using anything but freshly sawn White Oak, but this proves that as long as the wood is very high-quality and hasn’t been kiln dried, soaking is a viable option.
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This post was originally featured on our Instagram feed.
See the original post and discussion here.
