Steam Bending

Certain woods are suitable for bending over a shaped former when they are streamed and softened. This proves, which combines industrial techniques with traditional craft, is used to produce tight and multi-axis bends in solid wood.

Applications:
Steam bending is commonly used to produce furniture, boats and a range of musical instruments.

Related Processes:
CNC machining and wood laminating are commonly used to produce similar geometric outcomes, steam bending is used when the required aesthetic appeal and structural benefits of solid wood.

Quality:
The main attribute of bentwood is that the grain runs continually along the entire length. High quality timber is essential for steam bending. Splitting will occur when bending timber that has knots, rot or uneven grain.

Advantages:
The main advantage of bentwood is its strength; this allows parts to be lighter. It is also relatively simple to bendwood in a workshop on a small scale. This means that it is simple to explore design ideas quickly and cheaply.





















(Click for large image)

Bauhaus - Marcel Breuer

Notes: Term 1, Week 3 - Hardwoods and Softwoods

Hardwoods

Teak

Properties:
Teak is a hard hardwood, it is heavy and strong. It has a high durability and is strong in strength. Teak originated in India and Burma.
Uses:
Teak is used to build boats, cabinets, other furniture, flooring and decorative veneers.
Other:
It is best to use an oil finish when using teak. It can also be difficult to glue and its dust has known to be an irritant.

American Birch

Properties:
American Birch is a hard hardwood, it is heavy and strong but has a low durability. It originated from USA and Canada. Birch also finishes well.
Uses:
Making furniture, quality joinery, dowels and flooring. It is also used in the manufacture of plywood.

English Elm

Properties:
English Elm is a hardwood with an intermediate hardness. It has an intermediate weight and low durability. It finishes well but is not suitable for exterior work.
Uses:
Used for cabinet making, Windsor chairs, boat building, flooring and coffins.

Softwoods

Douglas-fir

Properties:
Douglas- fir is a softwood, it
Uses:
Douglas-fir is commonly used in the construction industry. It has also been used for home built aircraft. They are also the most common Christmas tree in the USA.

Western Red Cedar

Properties:

Western Red Cedar is a lightweight softwood that has a high durability and finishes well. It originated from Canada, UK and the USA. It is weak and is soft.

Uses:

Garden sheds, greenhouses, exterior boardings, fencing and posts.

Notes:

When nailing Western Red Cedar it is best to use galvanised or copper nails. This timber is not a true cedar.

Yellow Pine

Properties:

Yellow pine is a softwood that has an intermediate weight and is also strong. It also has a intermediate durability and finishes well.

Uses:

Construction work, shipbuilding, flooring, joinery work, crates and pallets.

Notes: Term 1, Week 1 - Natural woods

Hardwoods:
Hardwoods are generally deciduous broad-leaved species. Some examples of hardwoods would be:
Oak, Ash, Walnut, Yew, Beech, Teak

Softwoods:
Softwoods are generally evergreen. Some examples of softwoods would be:
Scots pine, Spruce, Douglas fir

Problems with using wood:
Woods is a natural material and so can have many defects. It is not consistent in structure. A common problem found in wood is knots. These found where branches have started to grow out of the trunk. Knots can weaken the structure as well as produce and irregular grain.

Conversion:
Conversion is the term used when sawing a tree trunk into usable pieces of timber. The choice of conversion method can enhance the grain and help make the materials more stable.
Different methods of sawing:
There are 2 main ways timber is cut into planks. Plain sawing and quarter sawing.












When the wood is plain sawn the planks produced are of a lower quality but more planks are produced as you are maximising the amount of wood you are getting from the trunk. When the wood is quarter sawn a higher quality of plank is produced but less planks can be produced.

Seasoning woods:
Seasoning is the controlled drying of timber. This can be achieved by natural seasoning or kiln drying. For both methods the moisture content must be lower than 20%. The ideal moisture content for a piece of wood is when the wood has the same moisture content as the air surrounding it.
For every 25mm of plank that you want to naturally season you will have to leave the wood for 1 year.

"I should never have bought!"

I wish that I had never had bought... a LG KG800 Chocolate mobile phone. I asked to get the phone for Christmas last year as my last phone was slightly outdated. At first there where lots of advantages to the phone. Aesthetically it is a fantastic design. The phone has a sleek smooth black design, complemented well by the choice of backlit red touch buttons. The screen was a good size and the design of the menus where equally as good. The materials that the phone was made from felt like they where of a high quality compared to other materials that phones are often made from. The cost of the phone was around £100 which at the time was quite cheap for a phone, especially a phone that appeared on the face of it to be so well designed. The designers had also clearly looked at a good range of ergonomic data, the phone fitted in the hand well and the buttons where of a good size.

Sadly despite the fantastic aesthetically quality of the phone the function is far from the same quality. The touch buttons where extremely hard to use and this resulted in it being difficult to use many of the functions and applications. The phone itself was a sliding phone and for a while this aspect of the phone was great, disappointingly like many other features of the phone the sliding function did not wear well. After a few month dirt had managed to collect in the grooves that allowed the phone to slide resulting in it being hard to actually slide the phone. The camera on the phone was also poor; the camera only produced low quality photos and did not respond well to conditions other than bright daylight.

I think that this phone was such a disappointment because the aesthetic properties of the phone where so good. The general trend for well designed products is that the function is normally equally as good. Sadly in this case it is not true.