However, I still expected to be able to make all the ribs with the wood i had. (I even made sure the grain was the right way because i read someone else's blog about that)
Of the 30 or so meters of wood i had, i managed 6 ribs that were... not good enough... but not broken in two...
I had them soaking in water for 4-5 days before bending them, the steam box worked well (scalded my finger quite a lot because i had a hole in my glove), but regardless, they all cracked a little bit when I bent them in the jig, which of course only got worse when I tried to bend them into the mortises.
In total I think I broke near 40 ribs.
I tried steaming them shorter time (10 minutes) and I tried longer (all the way up to 25).
steaming them for longer helped a bit, but they still buckled and cracked rather than bend smoothly.
I think the main problem was the wood. it was very cheap and low quality.
However another problem was that I didn't have the necessary tools to make the thinning near the ends smooth. I just thinned them with a knife, and i saw that more than one of the breaks were in spots where I'd made it a bit too thin with the knife.
As I ran out of wood around 3 I decided I needed to try to get some other wood for my next attempt.
We went to the same place, as the only other place I could possibly get lumber within a 2 hours drive isn't open on sundays.
We found some "List" wood (google translate was not helpful here, baseboard?).
It was 21mmx8mm, and cost 5 Swedish a meter. absolutely perfect!
I bought 21 meters, cut it up to fit in my box, and set it all to soaking.
There's still some diagonal grain here and there, but mostly it looked good, and the wood felt a lot better than the first batch, and i was able to bend this a bit already, so i'm expecting it to get better with soaking and steaming.
We'll have to see, but i may not have the time to go out and give it a try next weekend, so it may get 2 weeks of soaking. :P
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