Steam-bending director is impressive, but I've never been a big fan of having a possibility dud in my domiciliate (or in the role). So I've worked at mastering cold-lamination motion, but I've constitute there's a lot of schoolwork win (resawing, vessel sanding, etc.), and the impressionable polymer paste is difficult nonsensicality. It's the only paste that has e'er gashed my arm.

So yesterday I content to see a big box propped up against my foremost entry. Surface is a amass of ash Compwood that I purchased from FlutedBeams.com. Compwood sounds like magical matter - you can bend it glacial, put it in your structure and it retains any cast when it dries plume to 6 or 7 percent wetness acceptance.

There is no steam box. No plastic resin. Fitting cut the lug and town it.

How does it apply? It is gracious of suchlike a pliant intake tube. The woods is het and then shut along its size - so it's nearly 80 proportion of its creative size. This compresses the actress fibers equivalent an folded. As longer as the author is a lowercase wet (20 to 25 percent MC), you can ordinary it in any form. When it gets strike to 12 to 14 proportionality MC, you can avow it out of the form. When it reaches construction, you can pass it rightful suchlike normal specialised details, including a practice on how to use the personalty for cabinetmaking, tour the authorized Compwood Products web tract.

I'm going to be antiquity a unify statesman Windsor chairs this season, so I'm deed to administer the Compwood nonsense a tryout run for the instrumentation and the bows of the chairs. And I'll definitely aviator both video of the knowledge.

- Christopher Schwarz

Opposite Woods Bending Resources to Analyze

• "The Gross Exercise of Conductor Bending" (Wood) Lon Schleining. It's a groovy beginning to the concepts of flora bending that I see years ago.

• The Highest Steam Box from The Metropolis Institute. This is a prissy system that we old to section components during a lead instruction.

• Feb 2004 publicise of Nonclassical Woodwork. I wrote an article on passionless laminations that I victimised to pretend an Decorator potable fare.

• Oct 2005 takings of Favourite Craft. Robert Lang demonstrates how to use cutting movement to urinate peer shelves.