infoagrico.com APRENDERÁS CON NOSOTROS GRANDES ALTERNATIVAS
Practical guide to learn to BEND WOOD
Practical guide to learn to BEND WOOD
HOW TO BEND THE WOOD?
Wood goes through a variety of steps and phases before becoming a beam or a piece of furniture. Wood, a renewable resource and traditional building material, asserts itself as one of the industry’s building promises of the future; a suitable material for current sustainability requirements. However unlike concrete, which can have complex curves defined by its moulds, when it comes to wooden structures, it is much more common to use square pieces, especially for architecture.
PROPERTIES OF THE WOOD?
First of all to a tree blowing in a strong wind, wood has its own elasticity and can bend to a certain point before returning partially or completely when the wind stops. This is not all that different in a slice of wood. Naturally, this is directly dependent on the type of wood used and the dimensions of the curved piece.
Although scrubbing a Masisa piece to achieve those curves is often an option, this procedure creates a great deal of stress, requires a great deal of skilled labor and demands a great deal of money.
WHAT METHOD IS USED TO MAKE THE WOOD BEND?
Michael Thonet, a German Carpenter, was one of the first to develop a large-scale method of bending wood in the industrial scale and his organic chairs are still very common to find. The wood fibers are not cut in this manufacturing process, so the purity of the piece is not damaged. The method involves heating the wood to make it easier to work (malleable). In general, they use a device called a steam chamber that is designed to introduce the piece of wood into a high temperature of steam and ambient humidity. As temperatures reach , 99 °C lignin (an organic compound that connects cellular fibers and gives the plant cell wall rigidity).
