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How to Bend Wood into a Slide!

Brothers Make 14:00

54,696 views · 1,232 likes Watch on YouTube ↗

This is our entry for the Rockler Bent Wood Challenge hosted by Mike, Ben and Chris over at the Modern Maker Podcast.

We've never really tried any techniques to bend wood, so we figured we'd use this as a learning experience and designed this wooden slide to incorporate 3 different bending techniques.

We used kerf cutting to create a number of grooves in birch plywood to create curved corners to the steps. We filled these with white epoxy resin and used our track saw to create plunge cuts, which allowed us to glue in a reinforcing piece of hardwood.

For the slide we laminated 6 layers of 4mm birch plywood together, using a two-part form that we made. This was finished using a combination of varnish and wax to give a super smooth surface.

For the handles we ripped some ash into 5mm strips and then steamed these for 40 minutes in a polythene bag before clamping them around a form. Once they were dry, we added some glue and re-clamped overnight. This was our first ever go at steam bending in our workshop and we figured out our set up using this video below. Go and check it out if you're interested in a simple way to steam bend wood!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50uXPPt8-VI

We hope you enjoy the video and don't forget to check out all the other fantastic entries to the challenge!

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Music:
'BoogieBounce' - Drew Banga
'FurFunk' - Text Me Records
'Training in the Fire' - Twin Musicom
'Behind Closed Doors' - Otis McDonald
'U in My Arms' - Jeremy Blake
'Scarlet Fire' - Otis McDonald
'The Day is Close' - The 126ers

Training in the Fire by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Artist: http://www.twinmusicom.org/

Category (YouTube): Entertainment

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