ok so I'm bending some wood to make a chair. As you may have guessed, I dig furniture. functional beauty. I started to make a model (as I am prone to do), but decided I would start from a material-exploratory position instead. This project is, in fact, largely an excuse to play with some form of wood bending.
There are basically two types of wood bending: 1) steaming (or occasionally boiling) in order to increase moisture content and temperature, and 2) laminating (essentially gluing thin strips or veneers together and then clamping them in a mold). An interesting variation on steam bending is pre-compressed wood. The physics/science behind most of this is pretty simple, yet quite clever.
Since I don't have a steam box I decided to take the safer, messier route of laminate bending. I knew I wanted a design that would incorporate the form and structure of the chair with a single vocabulary.... a clear, universal system of some sort. I've settled on a system of straight, parallel lines along planes that bend to form a web when needed (i.e. to form a more comfortable surface or to allow planes to slide through each other). I'm sure this doesn't make much sense to anyone but me at the moment, but I will try and demonstrate.
The image to the left is roughly what I expect the form of the chair to be in section. Two intersecting triangles—one for the seat and one for the back. The surfaces of the seat and back will appear something like the image to the right. These surfaces can intersect due to the webbing pattern. The triangles would be secured together at the three intersection points (pointing hands), thus creating a very simple truss.This evening I laser cut a positive/negative form out of plywood. I planed and re-sawed a piece of poplar I found in the cage. In re-sawing I was aiming to get slices that were under 1/16" thick. (long aside: Research tells me you can achieve a bending radius is many woods that is around 100 times the thickness of the piece. With a 1/16" thick slice I could theoretically achieve a curvature with a 6" radius. sweet.) I made two successful test bends, each with 6 very thin slices of the poplar. I screwed up the form a bit from not letting the glue in it fully dry, but I re-glued it and left it clamped over night.
The only issue I'm really having at the moment is a bit of a mental one. In re-sawing the wood to get thin strips I am loosing the thickness of the blade (1/8" kerf) with every pass. This essentially means it requires 3/16" of wood to get a 1/16" strip. I'm losing twice as much wood as I'm utilizing. I don't care so much about the wood, but I'm not really comfortable with this awful of a level of efficiency in anything I design, even if its just a one-off chair. This will also become a monetary issue if I decide to make a nicer version in a better wood (I've been fantasizing about doing the seat-triangle in walnut and the back-triangle in cherry or ash). superficial research led me to think about buying some veneer sheets and tought me about burl.
Below is some documentation of the process. Early inspiration came from Alvar Aalto and Marcel Breuer who were admirably innovative in their use of both new and classical materials. Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions regarding any of this. Further updates can happen once I'm farther along if people are interested. Apologies on being so long-winded.
another aside: does anyone else find posting through blogger to be annoyingly cumbersome? Why does it all have to be in this tiny editing window and why is the integration of text and image different in this editing window than it is in the preview (which seems to also be different then how it is rendered when published)? And image placement isn't nearly as intuitive as it could be as far as I can tell. Am I missing something? probably.
—H-bomb
6 comments:
BLOGGER SUX DEEZ
UR CHAIR ROX
TEECH ME UR WAYZ
Hunter, on the bogger bad rap subject:
i like to use HTML to format text and images for the post. there are two views you can take when writing a post, you can use the Edit Html tag to make sure that you'r formatting i going in ok. as far as i can tell the only way to get the images not to wrap the text field is to use this method.
but yes, its an interface designed for idiots with no aesthetic sense. you know that "next blog" button? click that like 50 times or so, and you'll see. when you use digital tools like this, everything looks like the tool.
I agree with CAM.
HUNTER YOU PRINCE YOU ARE BUILDING YOURSELF A THRONE.
IT IS AWESOME.
make your images smaller and, as rod suggested, edit the html code of your post to get the formating right. the preview is a liar but remember that you can infinitely edit your posts. You just have to fuck around with it. I realize that it is an annoying medium, but i chose it because its easy to invite multiple people to be authors using my google contacts. Also, rize above bitches. For as many shitty blogs there are out there, there are a few really great ones. If anyone wants to rework the template for this, be my guest.
On curved wood: Awesome. These forms are elegant and beautiful. I'm thinking about this crazy packing material i came across the other day that is like thin woven cardboard. It flexes elastically and has a weave like the one you are trying to achiece. If you want to lose less material, make your cuts on the bandsaw with a guide: you can just clamp a piece of wood onto one of the bigger bandsaws, or some of the smaller ones have their own. Sculpture one style. hehe.
good luck.
c
Actually, if you'd like to go a bit further down Claire's road, just take a 2x4 (actually only 1.5x3.5, teehee), throw it on the chop saw (the yellow one) and just cut it up into somewhere around 5,000 pieces. First you'll have to get passed in the woodshop, so you should talk to Kate.
it looks like your laminated wood has Peyronie's disease.
looks good, man, when you got such pretty forms, the wood's gonna look good too. I don't understand how this thing will stay together with any weight in it, but it'll sure look nice. any thoughts to bring the curving of the laminate around so that it's not so 2-D? as in, let some of it in the section?
so you could do it sideways, I mean
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