I started this morning by cutting the ribs to length.
I then spent two and a half hours making sure all the ribs fit into the mortises.
the rounded holes made by the router were a bit too narrow, so i had to make them all a couple of mm wider, and if i do this again i'll definetly get an 8 mm chisel for the short side of the hole.
but in the end i had them all fitted, and made myself a steam box, using an electric kettle for the steam.
it worked fairly well, though it's not too solid, so i had to repair it between every round of steaming.
the bending however... worked fantastically.... bad.
out of 15 i broke 14.
and the 15'th was a bit wonky... but i figured, it was "good enough"...
if i have a chance i'll make a new one for it, but as it looks right now i've only got 7 extra ribs to replace broken one's, which means i'll most likely have to go buy more wood and try again next week, but i'll have to see how tomorrow goes first.
Hi Matthias. Looking good! Don't get disheartened with the rib's they are hard to get right.
ReplyDeleteA few things that you can check is that you have enough steam/temp in you steam box, and that they have had enough time in the box to get up to temp.
That they have had plenty of time soaking at least 2 -3 weeks.
Are you using ash for the ribs?
Cheers.
Robert
it's a bit tricky, as there's no proper place to get wood here, the only place available doesn't have the wood labeled, but i think it's all fir.
ReplyDeletethe steam box was plenty hot though (still got slightly sore fingers) and i made it smaller today to concentrate the steam... but.. see my next posting about today's work :P