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Showing posts from January 12, 2014

Trust the Jig

Perhaps due to my recent visit to a plywood factory , I have been interested in plywood and its properties. I wanted to try bending legs for a chair, just to get a feel for the material and how it works. This being my first time bending plywood, I made some foolish mistakes. The first one was to cut the strips along the grain, which made them much harder to bend. I used 1/8 inch, which was the thinnest I could find, but it was still pretty tough. I soaked the strips in a bath for a few hours to loosen them up.  When they were wet, I clamped them in position and left them to dry out a bit. They took a long time to dry, though, because they were clamped together. After a day or so, I took them out, glued them, and clamped them back. The glue on the top of the leg was dry after a few hours, but the bottom, where it touched the base of the jig, was still sticky. I took the piece out of the jig and clamped it separately. But, here was another mistake: I was afraid the leg wo