Use for 1/8" x 4 hardwoods?

[travis howe]

I'm picking up a "lot" of hardwood lumber at a great price. It comes w/ several hundred lf of this veneered type 1/8"inch that is in 8 to 10 foot sections and 4 to 5 inches wide.

Outside of trying to match some of it up for a tabletop veneer type of thing what else would one do with this? It's mostly alder but a little mix of everything.

Thanks,
Travis

[Jason Beam]

bent laminations?

scroll saw projects?

segmented pens?

Oars? (i think some are laminated, maybe wrong)

Archery Bows?

Just about anything laminated, really?

Knife scales?

Dollhouse Trim?

Wooden plane soles (if the species are hard enough)

Lotsa ideas!

[Jason Hallowell]

I got a deal on some similar lumber (exotics 4-6" wide x 3/16" thick) and made lot's of boxes out of it. Jewelry boxes, fishing pole cases, pool cue cases, and a small tea cabinet were among the projects.

[Jamie Smith]

Board & batten trim?

[Todd Burch]

If the grain is good, Shaker Oval Boxes.

[travis howe]

That bent laminations REALLY has me thinking... So how do you do this, what do you put behind the "laminate" portion? I'm going to be building a LARGE entertainment center in our living room and would love to do a bent / half round section in one or more places.

How do you bend the hardwood? What do you put behind the hardwood, several layers of hardwood or?

Other ideas are great too, this one really caught my eye!

Thanks all!

[Jerome Hanby]

Chess boards...

[Jason Beam]

That bent laminations REALLY has me thinking... So how do you do this, what do you put behind the "laminate" portion? I'm going to be building a LARGE entertainment center in our living room and would love to do a bent / half round section in one or more places.

How do you bend the hardwood? What do you put behind the hardwood, several layers of hardwood or?

Other ideas are great too, this one really caught my eye!

Thanks all!

Depends mostly on how tight a curve you want to make. If it's shallow, you can just laminate a few strips together around an MDF form. Yellow glue sets up real quick, though, so you may want to look into some of the other types out there - specifically urea resins and maybe epoxies.

If you really wanna make some curves, it's my understanding that kiln-dried wood should be avoided since it tends to be more brittle. Air-dried wood keeps most of it's lignin intact which helps it to be a bit more resilient to bending. Steam works real well for getting the things soft enough to wrap around your form ... again, yellow glue may not be ideal for this job, either.


You can find all sorts of information on bending wood online. Google searches turn up tons of stuff. Youtube videos, etc.

[Chris Padilla]

That bent laminations REALLY has me thinking... So how do you do this, what do you put behind the "laminate" portion? I'm going to be building a LARGE entertainment center in our living room and would love to do a bent / half round section in one or more places.

How do you bend the hardwood? What do you put behind the hardwood, several layers of hardwood or?

Other ideas are great too, this one really caught my eye!

Thanks all!

Adding to Jason's excellent advice, a vacuum bag press is excellent for curved/bent laminations but certainly not necessary. MDF makes great forms for gluing up such pieces. You basically make giant cauls in the desired shape and clamp the form between them. The MDF is often lined with cork (too smooth out MDF imperfections) and plastic (to prevent sticking).

If you have real tight turn/curves (small radius), you may need to sand down the 1/8" to 1/16" or even smaller. A drum sander works great for this. I've done a lot of this on my Tansu project.

You can also face glue a few strips together to yield a thicker piece if desired (vacuum bag press excels here, but again, MDF cauls and clamps work as well).

[Quinn McCarthy]

Stave core interior doors.

-qpm-

[John Coloccia]

re: bending

Buy, or make, a bending iron

Easily made with a blow torch and some pipe. Us guitar guys will soak the wood for about 10 minutes (3/32" maple, for example), and then gently bend it on the bending iron to as close to the right shape as we can. Then we clamp it in a form. When it all dries out (keep spraying it down with a little water to keep it wet while working it) it'll hold the shape of the form just dandy.

Anyhow, I haven't made furniture like this so take it with a grain of salt. That's just how guitars, mandolins and violins happen to be built. I'm guessing it would work to build anything, though, unless there's something I'm missing (which happens all the time, by the way).

[Bill Ragosta]

I use 1/8"X2"X6" rails for my box turkey calls and alder would certainly work. You'll find something to do with it.