Bending Glue Lams

[Bruce]

I'm making a copy of this wine rack out of walnut:

I got some 5" wide walnut and sawed a bunch of thin strips and drum sanded to just over 1/16" This site:

that walnut can be steamed to a 3" bend radius, which is a bit too big, but he's talking about steaming solid walnut, not laminated strips. My question is, does anyone think that I can bend about a 2" radius( 4" diameter) on 1/16" strips of walnut dry with just glue?

If not, what about steaming them and using a gorilla glue that is ok curing in water? I'm thinking that is the way I'm going to go. Looking at the picture, the only hard radius are the ends where you wrap a full 90 degrees on about a 2" radius. The others I think would bend find dry with glue.

Additionally, I just found this site which seems to indicate that at 1/16" thickness, I can bend to a radius 20-30X that thickness. That would be

1.25" - 1.875", which would be great, and it shows black walnut as being a decent wood to bend, not the best but not bad.

[Larry Laminger]

I've made several clocks that have a 180 degree, 3" radius out of laminated walnut. I use veneer that's about 3/64" thick. (I chanced upon a boatload of free veneer a couple years ago) It bends and forms pretty well. I've not had a reason to try a smaller radius, but there appears to be enough "play" left to get down to 2".

Wait... just ran out and tried it. Nothing scientific here, just bending it with my hands then holding it up to a tape measure. I was able to get down to 180 degree, 3/4" radius with the walnut. I also tried it with white oak...only made it to 2". I tried several pieces and got similar results with all. I'm not sure what the actual moisture content of this stock is. I do know that it is very dry (and old).

Why not take a piece you've milled, try bending it and see if it will go as far as you need it to. Moving slowly, you should be able to tell at what point you've reached maximum arc. You'll feel the fibers give way should you go too far.

By the way, interesting design. It says that it holds 2 dozen bottles of wine? I must be missing something.

Bruce wrote:

[Bruce]

Wow! It turns out mine is a bit thicker than I thought. It is miking out at .100 of an inch. I could sand it some more if I needed to.

I've played with it a bit but I'm a bit scared of going too far. I've only got one spare piece right now and I had to go 50 miles to a friends house for the band saw and drum sander so I'd hate to break it. I should have done some more but I hate to push a favor.

You know, I have been unable to figure that out too. I count space for 8 bottles myself.

[JohnV]

Slightly off topic but answers the question of how many bottles. You can get 24 in there. Stacking 4 bottles bottles in the tear and eye shaped elipses and 2 on each of the top arcs. This is similar to how you would stack them in a standard wine rack, just different design concept.

John V

[Eric Cartman]

It holds 3 bottles of wine in each allocated space.

[Larry Laminger]

OK, that makes sense. Thanks.

It must be larger than I first thought...

JohnV wrote:

[Bruce]

And larger than I'm making mine too. I don't think my strips are that long.

[Larry Laminger]