04
Wood-Bending Project
Once I was given the right tools and guidance, I felt much more confident to let my imagination take over...
This project was the first time that I had ever done wood bending. Before making the object, we were taught how to bend wood. With this new skill, we were asked to create a lamp, incorporating wood-bending however we wanted to. Overall for the lamp, I was inspired by the ocean and the fishes swimming around. That is why I chose a dark blue plexiglass to give off the color of the ocean. As for my bent ply, I wanted it to give off the sense that the ply is moving around the lamp, similar to how sometimes a school of fish swims in circles. What was most interesting about this connection, is that similar to my lamp, the light shines brightest in the middle of that circle of school of fish.
Process
We were taught two different ways in which we could approach wood bending. The first technique, which is the one I used, was using bending plywood. This technique is pretty
straightforward. As the name implies, you need bending ply, which is essentially a thin pliable strip of plywood, that you cut to your desired shape and length. Since the plywood is thin, to create thickness in the piece you have to add multiple strips. However, the more strips you add, the harder it will become to bend, meaning that it becomes more susceptible to breaking due to the pressure applied.
The other technique is also pretty simple, which was by using a steamer. This technique, however, is much more time-consuming since a lot of time is needed for the wood to be steamed enough to be bent. On the other hand, there are benefits to this technique, as you can use different types of wood, rather than being just limited to the bending ply.
Lastly, for both these techniques, once they’re ready to be bent, the wood has to be placed inside a vacuum-sealed bag, and placed on a mold to shape the wood into the desired shape. Other than the wood bending, we were asked to create any form of lighting piece we wanted.
The first thing that I needed to do in this project was to create the mold for the wood to bend. In this case, I decided that I wanted the wood to have a 120º bend. As seen in the image, I did this by first drawing an isosceles triangle to get the angle right.
After this, I smoothed out the corner of the drawing using a compass.
Next, I wanted to increase the efficiency of the mold, so it could fit as many pieces of ply as possible. This meant I had to make it wider, for which I added a piece of MDF between each carved-out mold to increase the width. Increasing the width allowed for me to put all four pieces of ply at once, meaning that I just needed to go through the vacuum sealing process once.
Next came the construction of the lamp. I used MDF to construct the lamp. I used 45º angled cuts at the corners of the lamp as I liked that it gave the corners a cleaner look. Then I made dado cuts at the middle of each to put a ¼’’ piece of blue plexiglass, both to add color to the light emitted and to diffuse it a bit so it’s not so strong on the eyes.
Being one of the first woodwork projects I have ever done, I am proud of the result. Wood bending was a really fun process to learn and now that I know about it, it opens up many possibilities to utilize wood in different ways.
I’m happy with the way that my lamp looks, as it resembles the idea I had of the school of fish swimming in circles, as well as giving off a beautiful dark blue light.
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One thing that I would like to improve for the future is making the lamp not look as stiff, due to the rectangular shape. Similar to the ocean, I would’ve also liked to portray the waves through a more organic shape for the lamp. However, due to it being one of my first times woodworking, that is still more advanced for me, yet it is something I want to keep getting practice on so I can achieve it.