Canoe no 3 just started.bending stems with heat gun hint.

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alick burt
Posts: 255
Joined: Wed Sep 07, 2005 2:41 am
Location: united kingdom
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Canoe no 3 just started.bending stems with heat gun hint.

Post by alick burt »

Hi Folks
I'm right at the start of my third canoe.Thought I'd soak the stem laminations overnight in the interest of making things easier.Then last night I read posts about using a heat gun for the bending process and thought that might be a good idea.Today I bent my soaked laminates into place using the heat gun and clamped them to my forms.This went easily but then I thought i would see how it compared with using the heat gun on dry laminations that I had spare.
To my surprise it was actually easier to bend the dry laminates because they kept their shape better when the heat gun was removed whilst my wet ones continued to return to their original straight shape unless I held them with cramps!
Lesson learnt for next time but now I am just going to wait for my laminates to dry out on the forms at least they are completely free of cracks and conformed to the shape really well.Image
Cheers Alick
fonz
Posts: 22
Joined: Fri Aug 19, 2011 3:45 pm

Re: Canoe no 3 just started.bending stems with heat gun hint

Post by fonz »

It looks like things went well. What type of wood did you use?
alick burt
Posts: 255
Joined: Wed Sep 07, 2005 2:41 am
Location: united kingdom
Contact:

Re: Canoe no 3 just started.bending stems with heat gun hint

Post by alick burt »

Hi Fonz
I used ash for my stems I also use it for gunwales because it just works so well in these situations and its quite cheap in the uk too.
Cheers
Alick.
p.s.planed and thicknessed some cedar today for planking.unfortunately couldn't get it full length but I will also be using some pine as this one is going to be stripey.
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