"Balsa/Basswood: How to safely bend..?" Topic

Hi, all.

Has anybody bent balsa or basswood by soaking it in water and then letting it dry in place?

I want to make some lobster traps like the ones pictured here:

I need to create three curved supports to lay the outer strips across.

Thought about using wire but I like the look of wood spines better.

Any ideas/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

steam is your friend

I thought I saw a hand tool that allowed you to heat the wood to shape it, in with wood ship models. Either Micro mark or Model expo?

I dont know why it wouldnt work.I have used very thin strips of balsa as is to gently bend and glue in place,but not to the extremity youre talking about.Why not use painted strips of card?

MicroMark sells it for ship building. Never tried bending balsa wood.

I'm thinking Styrene, or wire would be a bit easier to use.

Also, some wooden rowboats sold by one of the craft stores has one or two of these glued onto them. Probably suitable for 25mm/28mm figs. They could be removed with a bit of tugging and prying – people find them superfluous to their use as pirate sloops, or other craft.

The other advantage of these is they come already rigged with netting too.

Hobby Lobby is the place, if I recall correctly, and they are sold either under the rowboat, or sailboat label.

Don't bother with wood, try using "fun foam" which comes in a couple thicknesses. Get a sheet if brown, cut a strip the thickness you need and you are good to go. Painting it like wood after that is easy enough. Works great for anytime you want the wood look but something you can easily bend in multiple directions.

MicroMark sells this strip-bending tool which puts a v-shaped crimp on the inside of the plank, causing a slight bend. Repeat along the length for more pronounced curves.

link

(I don't have one myself so I can't say how well it works.)

I haven't worked with lime, but given the rather extreme curvature of what you're trying to produce my hunch would be that you should select a wood whose natural properties favour flexibility rather than trying to force balsa to fit the job. If you use willow that is freshly collected so hasn't dried and become brittle, use a thin strip and use steam as well I'm sure you'd be able to pull it off successfully.

Some example of what can be achieved with willow:
link

Cheers,
ANdy

I'd cheat and cut the curved frames from sheet of the appropriate thickness.

Doug

Excellent suggestions, all. Thank you so much for the feedback. I like Doug's suggestion best, I think. ;-}~

You can't bend balsa, the cell structure is wrong. Model boat builders use bass wood. You need small celled woods. I would not bother with steam bending as the curves you are trying to do are rather extreme.

As Doug suggested, make a form, cover it in wax paper and build up the piece using a lamination technique. If this is a small model, cut up strips of index card and cover in white glue, remove the excess and build up the structure over the form layer after layer. For added strength saturate the piece with super thin CA and it becomes like resin. This is very fast and seasy. I use this technique to build the bulkheads around the uppor decks of 1:1000 ships.

If you are making a larger scale pot, try thin veneer with the grain running the long way or possibly matt board. Thin plywood might work, but it has to be thin and might cost too much. If you use plywood it has to have many thin layers (Baltic Birch) the cheap stuff with just a few thik layers will very likely crack.

I'm assuming you're going to paint the finished product, because if you wanted natural grain, you wouldn't have even considered balsa.

One other technique if you are building big is to "kurf" the wood. This involves taking a solid piece of wood or Baltic birch plywood with the grain running the long way and cutting perpendicular slots 3/4 -7/8 of the way through the back of the strip. Make a cut every 1/2-1/4" depending on the amount of bend. This allows the wood to be bent without having to compress the inside radious. This technique is usually done using a table saw or a sliding miter saw with a depth adjustment. It's best used when fitting trim around walls where the bent wood can be fixed to an existing curve. You still could use this technique if you saturated the slots with wood glue or fiberglass resin and bent it over a form from which it could late be removed. (remember to line the form with some non stick material like wax paper

Have you thought of plastic tube?

Heat, slightly flatten to create an oval and cut in half?

Once cool you can cut lots of slats out as required.

May I offer a very different suggestion? Find thin wood disks that give you the appropriate diameter, glue them together as a stack with the glue only in the very center of the disk – clamp and let dry. When dry, drill out the center of the disks – you'll have to clamp in a different dimension. Do it right and you'll be left with circles only. Now, cut those circles in half and you have the hoops (or a reasonable approximation since they will be half circles rather than the extended arcs in the lobster pots you've posted). A drill press and 'holding template' will make the job a lot easier. After that all you need are straight pieces of wood to create the slats and some orange mesh bags should give you the netting. Please let us know what you do in the end and share photos of your work. By the way, you didn't mention scale.

Hold thin strips of wood over a boiling teakettle for a bit. After a while it will easily bend. I've done it with multiple types of wood over the years.