Friday, November 6, 2009

Success with boil-bending at last

On my third and fourth tries bending maple strips by boiling them in coffee, I was able to get it to work reasonably well. None of the bracelets are going to end up as I originally envisioned, but that's usually the way.

Here's the third batch in the pot with the beads.




And bent around the form.



If I do this again, I need to take the time to build up a ramp so that the strip is fully supported at the spot where it first crosses itself as it wraps around. Both of these pieces have damage at those spots that I'll have to cut away.





On my fourth attempt, I used a thin, long strip, and tried to push it into the pot like spaghetti.





I captured a video of the strip coming steaming out of the pot, and of the bending and clamping process.




And here are the future bracelets.


3 comments:

  1. David VeldhuizenNovember 8, 2009 at 12:34 PM

    The first bracelet from this batch is now listed. Photos here:

    http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=34060846

    ReplyDelete
  2. Andy from WorkshopshedNovember 24, 2009 at 9:12 AM

    Why coffee and not water?

    ReplyDelete
  3. David VeldhuizenNovember 24, 2009 at 10:46 AM

    Well, I do it for the colour. The urban maple I tend to use doesn't always show attractive figure, and the warm brown wash from the coffee tends to enhance the grain but blend the blotchiness.

    For all I know, the alkaloids in the coffee might make the process harder or be bad for the wood. But so far I've been getting really nice results, especially with the coffee-boiled beads.

    ReplyDelete

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