Steaming Wood for Bending / Shaping

We are refurbishing two bucket seats and needed to provide timber work to one of the seats which was missing. We have steamed wood ribs for a vintage boat and thought we would apply the same process to our Austin Seven.

A steamer box was made from an old food storage box and a wall paper steamer to provide the steam. We used marine plywood for the timber panels, using the complete seat as a template.

 The process of steaming the timber to allow it to bend took 20 mins in the steamer. The wood was then clamped to the bucket seat, which when cooled was fixed with brass screws.

We also wanted to provide a curve to the rear panel behind the seats, so despite the chap in the shop saying we would need flexible plywood, we thought we would have a go with 4mm marine plywood. The curve only needed to be at the base of the panel, so we made up a rig using an old telegraph pole as a former and the wall paper steamer to heat the plywood for bending.

Douglas Alderson DA7C