Can anyone tell me if it's possible to make bent wood furniture a la Eames at home? Or does it require expensive shop equipment?
Thanks!
lletdownl
Aug 31, 07 2:13 pm
if you have the ability to cut out the forms you want, a way to soak the wood and some clamps to hold it while it forms i dont see why you couldnt do it at home...
cadalyst
Aug 31, 07 2:15 pm
yeah it's possible to use clamps. most manufacturing i've seen uses hot steam and a press, but of course they are producing 1000 at a clip. i think it would be pretty cool to do a DIY, take pictures and show us your progress.
cadalyst
Aug 31, 07 2:15 pm
or setup a jig, that way all your pieces are ideally the exactly sized and symmetrical
larslarson
Aug 31, 07 2:19 pm
what lletdownl said...but in addition it is possible to also
buy a system that uses a heavy duty plastic bag and a vacuum
so that it holds the piece uniformly to the form..like they'd do
in a regular shop. i'd look at grizzly.com or similar to see what
they have.
to make the forms it'll probably take a good jigsaw and/or bandsaw
and probably a belt sander...(i'm assuming you're doing curves
obviously)..and some clamps if you're making multilayered forms
that need to be glued together.
sanofiSYN
Aug 31, 07 2:33 pm
larslarson-
i just checked out grizzly.com for their air vacuum kits. they're not as outrageously priced as i thought. i wonder how well they work. anyone have any experience?
Well, let's look closer at an Eames chair. There is no solid bent wood present; rather, the plies of veneer, in both the legs and the seating surfaces, are pressed between mating forms ("male" and "female") during the laminating process, and the glue holds the veneers in their final shape after it sets. Clamps are used, of course, or a vacuum bag can eliminate the need for two-part forms -- but the process is a bit more involved than is suggested above.
Can it be done "at home" ? Sure, if your home is a well-equipped woodworking shop.
If you're enthusiastic to try this, start small and make some simple bent pieces. Note, too, that the parts of the Eames chair(s) have very little two-way bending; the seat in cupped in the rear and bends over the front edge only where the rear bend has become flat. This is because wood, even in veneer form, behaves like a sheet of cardboard, and resists stretching or shrinking across its width. So, playing with stiff paper will be a good exercise in learning what plywood "wants to do." (The back of the chair shows some two-way bending around the edges; this would be accomplished with lots of pressure between two hard mating forms.)
SDR
larslarson
Aug 31, 07 2:47 pm
sdr...
can't you heat plywood to a point where the glue melts
between the layers? or is this unrealistic?
don't you think you could do some simple pieces without
a number of things you'd need in a normal shop? ie a
table saw, planer, sander, joiner etc. with a little ingenuity
don't you think you could do it with a jigsaw, circular saw,
belt sander, drill, clamps and a press?
of course that's a couple more tools than most people have...
The Roarockit, linked by mightylittle, was designed by my former industrial design woodshop teacher, Ted (at OCAD in Toronto, if anybody cares). He's in his 50's (at least) and he's an avid skateboarder and surfer and he's one of the best profs I ever had.
But that's all beside the point. His Roarockit kit works really well, and is expandable with a little enginuity (ie you can find larger plastic sheets, which he may have available by now).
Lars -- Let me know if you find plywood whose glue can be softened. Most plywood is glued with thermo-setting glue, which (unlike thermoplastic resins) means it can't be reheated and softened.
So, all bent plywood is given its shape at the time that it is glued. This requires a way to keep the plies tightly pressed together while the glue sets. With a vacuum bag and pump (mightylittle's link shows a small system that would be a good place to start; Vacupress in Brunswick, ME are the oldest makers I know of and their site shows some shapes being pressed) all you would need would be a male (positive) form. For small pieces (say a 1/4 scale model of a chair) you might be able to press the veneers to the form with a stiff sheet of plastic and a number of bars (cauls) and clamps.
SDR
SDR
Aug 31, 07 5:20 pm
Thanks, slantsix. Skateboards often have a slightly compound shape, so the 1/16" maple veneers and a vacuum press are apparently able to force the material into shape -- a good sign. I'd be interested to know how your teacher recommends that the form(s) be made for those pieces. One method is to make an eggcrate of plywood or MDF with a shape cut into one edge of all the pieces -- making a "landscape" that represents the desired shape. What the sheet material is that you put next to this eggcrate to provide a firm and consistent form, I don't know. Another method would be to shape and stack a solid row of pieces to make the "landscape."
SDR
PerCorell
Aug 31, 07 5:27 pm
Several years ago a new technike offered cold bending of prepared raw wood pieces , the technike worked by "compressing" the wood in a steam box adding hundreds of tonn forcing a plank shorter by hydrolic oistons creating a mictoscopic zig-zag pattern in the grains pattern. It worked fine, the wood just had to be kept wet as if you deformed it and let it dry, it would keep that form. Maybe the methosd was to expensive or required to fine wood samples I know there was a lot waste as the grains would pack up round a knot, Anyway I recall the name was "Compwood" , maybe this still exist, I just became tired of it, as there also was drawbacks even you could tigha knot on an inch diameter ash sharft , allow it to dry and you had a round piece of wood with a knot on it. Still , if it bacame wet again it worked so, that suddenly wood, that generaly don't expand lengthwise, suddenly could do just that, up to some 4 pct, --- that's something that will make a carpenter crazy.
David Cuthbert
Aug 31, 07 5:29 pm
yea you can do it at home but...it won't bend as easily and it will be very close to failure many times. I designed a bentwood dining chair set for my sister - as part of her wedding gift. They could only get it to bend in one dimension at a radius of about 6-8" using clamps and steam/boiling water after the wood had been soaked for about 3 days. Drying is important and tricky and has to be done fair uniformly. good luck
binary
Aug 31, 07 5:32 pm
make jig
use thin layers of wood
use epoxy between layers.... like west system...
cut parts to rough shape
glue/clamp/glue
finish edges with a router/sander
if you use a water based glue, the wood might deform a little here and there due to moisture content....
b
larslarson
Aug 31, 07 5:38 pm
good to know sdr...
seemed like it was a slight possibility..but makes sense that it
wouldn't work that way.
so you can only do small pieces with a vacuum press?
most others are done with a pneumatic press?
bowling_ball
Aug 31, 07 5:53 pm
If you peek around on the Roarockit site, there are a couple of tutorials on furniture making. A friend of mine used the system, with larger bags, to create bentwood chairs for a design competition (which he won, partly due to the quality). If you can rig it up, a small air compressor will do the same job much quicker, but of course costs many times more than a manual kit.
The quick run-down with a manual system is that you build a form over which you press your veneers. We used either pink or blue rigid insulation panels, cut and laminated and then sanded, as our form. You could also use MDF.
Once you've got your form, you need to select veneers. 1/16" works well for most woods. These are glued quickly and evenly , and put inside the vacuum bag, on TOP of the foam. Over this, a mesh is laid which helps all the air to be evacuated. This is all explained a lot better on the website.
Anyway, then the bag is sealed via two-sided tape or a reusable gum sealant. The air is pumped out (takes about a minute or two). Everything's left to dry inside the vacuum bag, usually overnight.
Once everything's dry, remove the laminated veneers and cut and sand to shape however you'd like.
Don't expect perfection the first couple times around, but once you get a routine down, it's not too difficult. This system works on practically any scale, from 1/4 scale models to full-scale furniture, etc.
I haven't used this system in a while, but now that I've been reminded of it, I'm going to pick one up next week for school.
myriam
Aug 31, 07 7:31 pm
clamps are fine in theory but depending on the shape/size of the pieces you are bending, the clamps can start to get in the way of each other so that they interfere with the placement of other clamps. the thing starts to look like some dental headgear on steroids. also, those strong orange clamps are pretty expensive. given how many you'd need, it may be cheaper to simply build your own vacuum-bag. it's not super hard, but you have to check seals all the time...
myriam
Aug 31, 07 7:33 pm
oh, the number one thing i learned while shaping bent lam wood was:
WATCH YOUR SQUEEZE-OUT!!!
come back and check over and over for glue squeeze-out... keep wiping, keep cleaning, continually throughout the clamping process... it is much easier to get it when its wet than to sand/chisel/scrape it off when dried. ugh.
The Vacupress site shows large pieces being formed; there are special bags for doing (for instance) spiral stair stringers. Vacuum pumps are electric or compressed-air operated. Most people use water-borne glues; PVA white glue has longer open time than yellow glue. You don't want to use a glue that won't peel off the inside of the bag. . .
SDR
SDR
Aug 31, 07 7:39 pm
I have been using polyurethane glue a lot; it has good features but creates a lot of squeeze-out as it cures. But this squeeze-out is very easy to deal with, as it is foamy: it scrapes and sands very easily. I haven't tried it in a vac bag, yet.
SDR
myriam
Aug 31, 07 7:45 pm
hmm, good idea, SDR, i was using typical carpenter's glue. i didn't know that about using white glue instead... good tip!
SDR
Aug 31, 07 8:16 pm
Yeah -- it's a little more slippery, too, which can help the plies flatten out in a vacuum bag as you need them to.
I haven't used a bag with the net material; this was never necessary, as long as there was a place for the air to evacuate along the edges of the work. I wonder what effect it would have on the surface of a piece with thin veneer on the outside ? (I have done lots of curved work, but mostly used the bag for flat pieces.)
SDR
bowling_ball
Aug 31, 07 9:00 pm
Thanks for that last link, SDR. Although I won't be purchasing anything like that anytime soon, it's good to know that it's out there if I need it. Until recently I had access to the vacuum system at school, otherwise I've used the Roarockit kit linked above, which suits furniture model-making quite well.
SDR
Aug 31, 07 11:51 pm
I'd be interested to hear of anyone's experiences or experiments with various woodworking techniques. We can all learn from each other; I've been given much help in the past by random exchanges like these. We all have to do a certain amount of innovating, which is a great pleasure, of course.
SDR
SDR
Sep 2, 07 8:32 pm
Don't tell me I killed the thread. . .
SDR
Sep 2, 07 10:33 pm
Yow. A picture worth a thousand words ? Is that a heating grid in the form or mold to the left ?
won and done williams
Sep 3, 07 1:59 pm
the eames shop. they used what they called a "kazam!" for vacuum forming plywood. i think the process has already been basically explained above, but from a historical point of view, it would be interesting to research how the kazam! worked.
on another thread, someone mentioned a desktop cnc miller of some sort. they gave a link to some manufacturer called roland, but it was broken. anyway, if it's not too expensive and depending on its size and capabilities, it would be great to use it to create the form.
SDR
Sep 3, 07 9:48 pm
It may be that one day soon every desktop -- or benchtop -- will have a CNC machine -- or perhaps a 3D printer ?
SDR
grid
Nov 1, 08 11:48 pm
I'm bumping this post. Does anyone have experience making their own vacuum bag?
What type of valve do you need to put on there? What is a good place to buy the vinyl plastic? home depot?
What kind of vacuum pump do you intend to use ? Vacuum bags I've used didn't need a special valve; the pump maintains the vacuum.
grid
Nov 2, 08 12:50 am
yeah, i saw that - very informative video. I was planning on planning on following a tutorial i found to rebuild a bike pump to act as a vacuum pump... I keep going back and forth on whether i should just clamp the wood or vacuum bag it.
I am using 1/8" "bendy ply" - to get it to hold its shape do I have to use two layers? or after soaking it and molding it (and gluing it to itself in some areas) will it hold its form or just bounce back to a flat sheet?
SDR
Nov 2, 08 1:09 am
Too many variables in your questions, without seeing specifically what you are making. Drawings ?
MichaelB90
Mar 7, 19 6:39 pm
Yeah... it is possible with clamps but it's gonna take a bit of time and experience to nail it. Have a look at how they do it in the factories in Poland in this post that I found.
Can anyone tell me if it's possible to make bent wood furniture a la Eames at home? Or does it require expensive shop equipment?
Thanks!
if you have the ability to cut out the forms you want, a way to soak the wood and some clamps to hold it while it forms i dont see why you couldnt do it at home...
yeah it's possible to use clamps. most manufacturing i've seen uses hot steam and a press, but of course they are producing 1000 at a clip. i think it would be pretty cool to do a DIY, take pictures and show us your progress.
or setup a jig, that way all your pieces are ideally the exactly sized and symmetrical
what lletdownl said...but in addition it is possible to also
buy a system that uses a heavy duty plastic bag and a vacuum
so that it holds the piece uniformly to the form..like they'd do
in a regular shop. i'd look at grizzly.com or similar to see what
they have.
to make the forms it'll probably take a good jigsaw and/or bandsaw
and probably a belt sander...(i'm assuming you're doing curves
obviously)..and some clamps if you're making multilayered forms
that need to be glued together.
larslarson-
i just checked out grizzly.com for their air vacuum kits. they're not as outrageously priced as i thought. i wonder how well they work. anyone have any experience?
http://www.grizzly.com/products/searchresults.aspx?q=vacuum&submit
Well, let's look closer at an Eames chair. There is no solid bent wood present; rather, the plies of veneer, in both the legs and the seating surfaces, are pressed between mating forms ("male" and "female") during the laminating process, and the glue holds the veneers in their final shape after it sets. Clamps are used, of course, or a vacuum bag can eliminate the need for two-part forms -- but the process is a bit more involved than is suggested above.
Can it be done "at home" ? Sure, if your home is a well-equipped woodworking shop.
If you're enthusiastic to try this, start small and make some simple bent pieces. Note, too, that the parts of the Eames chair(s) have very little two-way bending; the seat in cupped in the rear and bends over the front edge only where the rear bend has become flat. This is because wood, even in veneer form, behaves like a sheet of cardboard, and resists stretching or shrinking across its width. So, playing with stiff paper will be a good exercise in learning what plywood "wants to do." (The back of the chair shows some two-way bending around the edges; this would be accomplished with lots of pressure between two hard mating forms.)
SDR
sdr...
can't you heat plywood to a point where the glue melts
between the layers? or is this unrealistic?
don't you think you could do some simple pieces without
a number of things you'd need in a normal shop? ie a
table saw, planer, sander, joiner etc. with a little ingenuity
don't you think you could do it with a jigsaw, circular saw,
belt sander, drill, clamps and a press?
of course that's a couple more tools than most people have...
The Roarockit, linked by mightylittle, was designed by my former industrial design woodshop teacher, Ted (at OCAD in Toronto, if anybody cares). He's in his 50's (at least) and he's an avid skateboarder and surfer and he's one of the best profs I ever had.
But that's all beside the point. His Roarockit kit works really well, and is expandable with a little enginuity (ie you can find larger plastic sheets, which he may have available by now).
You can also get the same vacuum press via Lee Valley Tools, albeit rebranded, here: http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=1&p=51167&cat=1,250,43298,43314
Lars -- Let me know if you find plywood whose glue can be softened. Most plywood is glued with thermo-setting glue, which (unlike thermoplastic resins) means it can't be reheated and softened.
So, all bent plywood is given its shape at the time that it is glued. This requires a way to keep the plies tightly pressed together while the glue sets. With a vacuum bag and pump (mightylittle's link shows a small system that would be a good place to start; Vacupress in Brunswick, ME are the oldest makers I know of and their site shows some shapes being pressed) all you would need would be a male (positive) form. For small pieces (say a 1/4 scale model of a chair) you might be able to press the veneers to the form with a stiff sheet of plastic and a number of bars (cauls) and clamps.
SDR
Thanks, slantsix. Skateboards often have a slightly compound shape, so the 1/16" maple veneers and a vacuum press are apparently able to force the material into shape -- a good sign. I'd be interested to know how your teacher recommends that the form(s) be made for those pieces. One method is to make an eggcrate of plywood or MDF with a shape cut into one edge of all the pieces -- making a "landscape" that represents the desired shape. What the sheet material is that you put next to this eggcrate to provide a firm and consistent form, I don't know. Another method would be to shape and stack a solid row of pieces to make the "landscape."
SDR
Several years ago a new technike offered cold bending of prepared raw wood pieces , the technike worked by "compressing" the wood in a steam box adding hundreds of tonn forcing a plank shorter by hydrolic oistons creating a mictoscopic zig-zag pattern in the grains pattern. It worked fine, the wood just had to be kept wet as if you deformed it and let it dry, it would keep that form. Maybe the methosd was to expensive or required to fine wood samples I know there was a lot waste as the grains would pack up round a knot, Anyway I recall the name was "Compwood" , maybe this still exist, I just became tired of it, as there also was drawbacks even you could tigha knot on an inch diameter ash sharft , allow it to dry and you had a round piece of wood with a knot on it. Still , if it bacame wet again it worked so, that suddenly wood, that generaly don't expand lengthwise, suddenly could do just that, up to some 4 pct, --- that's something that will make a carpenter crazy.
yea you can do it at home but...it won't bend as easily and it will be very close to failure many times. I designed a bentwood dining chair set for my sister - as part of her wedding gift. They could only get it to bend in one dimension at a radius of about 6-8" using clamps and steam/boiling water after the wood had been soaked for about 3 days. Drying is important and tricky and has to be done fair uniformly. good luck
make jig
use thin layers of wood
use epoxy between layers.... like west system...
cut parts to rough shape
glue/clamp/glue
finish edges with a router/sander
if you use a water based glue, the wood might deform a little here and there due to moisture content....
b
good to know sdr...
seemed like it was a slight possibility..but makes sense that it
wouldn't work that way.
so you can only do small pieces with a vacuum press?
most others are done with a pneumatic press?
If you peek around on the Roarockit site, there are a couple of tutorials on furniture making. A friend of mine used the system, with larger bags, to create bentwood chairs for a design competition (which he won, partly due to the quality). If you can rig it up, a small air compressor will do the same job much quicker, but of course costs many times more than a manual kit.
The quick run-down with a manual system is that you build a form over which you press your veneers. We used either pink or blue rigid insulation panels, cut and laminated and then sanded, as our form. You could also use MDF.
Once you've got your form, you need to select veneers. 1/16" works well for most woods. These are glued quickly and evenly , and put inside the vacuum bag, on TOP of the foam. Over this, a mesh is laid which helps all the air to be evacuated. This is all explained a lot better on the website.
Anyway, then the bag is sealed via two-sided tape or a reusable gum sealant. The air is pumped out (takes about a minute or two). Everything's left to dry inside the vacuum bag, usually overnight.
Once everything's dry, remove the laminated veneers and cut and sand to shape however you'd like.
Don't expect perfection the first couple times around, but once you get a routine down, it's not too difficult. This system works on practically any scale, from 1/4 scale models to full-scale furniture, etc.
I haven't used this system in a while, but now that I've been reminded of it, I'm going to pick one up next week for school.
clamps are fine in theory but depending on the shape/size of the pieces you are bending, the clamps can start to get in the way of each other so that they interfere with the placement of other clamps. the thing starts to look like some dental headgear on steroids. also, those strong orange clamps are pretty expensive. given how many you'd need, it may be cheaper to simply build your own vacuum-bag. it's not super hard, but you have to check seals all the time...
oh, the number one thing i learned while shaping bent lam wood was:
WATCH YOUR SQUEEZE-OUT!!!
come back and check over and over for glue squeeze-out... keep wiping, keep cleaning, continually throughout the clamping process... it is much easier to get it when its wet than to sand/chisel/scrape it off when dried. ugh.
http://www.vacupress.com/
The Vacupress site shows large pieces being formed; there are special bags for doing (for instance) spiral stair stringers. Vacuum pumps are electric or compressed-air operated. Most people use water-borne glues; PVA white glue has longer open time than yellow glue. You don't want to use a glue that won't peel off the inside of the bag. . .
SDR
I have been using polyurethane glue a lot; it has good features but creates a lot of squeeze-out as it cures. But this squeeze-out is very easy to deal with, as it is foamy: it scrapes and sands very easily. I haven't tried it in a vac bag, yet.
SDR
hmm, good idea, SDR, i was using typical carpenter's glue. i didn't know that about using white glue instead... good tip!
Yeah -- it's a little more slippery, too, which can help the plies flatten out in a vacuum bag as you need them to.
I haven't used a bag with the net material; this was never necessary, as long as there was a place for the air to evacuate along the edges of the work. I wonder what effect it would have on the surface of a piece with thin veneer on the outside ? (I have done lots of curved work, but mostly used the bag for flat pieces.)
SDR
Thanks for that last link, SDR. Although I won't be purchasing anything like that anytime soon, it's good to know that it's out there if I need it. Until recently I had access to the vacuum system at school, otherwise I've used the Roarockit kit linked above, which suits furniture model-making quite well.
I'd be interested to hear of anyone's experiences or experiments with various woodworking techniques. We can all learn from each other; I've been given much help in the past by random exchanges like these. We all have to do a certain amount of innovating, which is a great pleasure, of course.
SDR
Don't tell me I killed the thread. . .
Yow. A picture worth a thousand words ? Is that a heating grid in the form or mold to the left ?
the eames shop. they used what they called a "kazam!" for vacuum forming plywood. i think the process has already been basically explained above, but from a historical point of view, it would be interesting to research how the kazam! worked.
here's a link to an exhibit on the eames. tumbleweed's image above is from the same exhibition.
on another thread, someone mentioned a desktop cnc miller of some sort. they gave a link to some manufacturer called roland, but it was broken. anyway, if it's not too expensive and depending on its size and capabilities, it would be great to use it to create the form.
It may be that one day soon every desktop -- or benchtop -- will have a CNC machine -- or perhaps a 3D printer ?
SDR
I'm bumping this post. Does anyone have experience making their own vacuum bag?
What type of valve do you need to put on there? What is a good place to buy the vinyl plastic? home depot?
What kind of vacuum pump do you intend to use ? Vacuum bags I've used didn't need a special valve; the pump maintains the vacuum.
yeah, i saw that - very informative video. I was planning on planning on following a tutorial i found to rebuild a bike pump to act as a vacuum pump... I keep going back and forth on whether i should just clamp the wood or vacuum bag it.
I am using 1/8" "bendy ply" - to get it to hold its shape do I have to use two layers? or after soaking it and molding it (and gluing it to itself in some areas) will it hold its form or just bounce back to a flat sheet?
Too many variables in your questions, without seeing specifically what you are making. Drawings ?
Yeah... it is possible with clamps but it's gonna take a bit of time and experience to nail it. Have a look at how they do it in the factories in Poland in this post that I found.
https://www.apex.com.au/blog/h...