Steaming walking sticks??

[carvingbarn]

I have some dry sticks that have excessive bends in them. These bends make them unusable for walking sticks or canes. Other than the bends they are good looking staffs. I have seen some articles on steaming sticks, making the cellulose in the wood soft and giving you a short time to straiten them out. If any one has done this. I was wondering how long you let a stick dry after steaming them until you use them? And was there an issue with the wood cracking. Or does some one know where I can find more information about this.
Thank you.

[Waitpinga Whittler]

Hi Randy,
I don't steam sticks myself, but the guys on this site do it all the time. There's a whole thread category dedicated to straightening sticks.
www.thestickman.co.uk/forum/index.php

[Marvin Little]

Randy, I have a steamer but very seldom use it. I straighten most of my dry sticks with a hot air gun and a press. You can straighten most of the kinks this way if you do it a little at a time. I have a press made out of a 6" flat jawed vice with an oak block screwed to the jaws. I cut the block on a band saw in a curved cut and lined the jaws with a piece of carpet to keep from compressing the wood on the stick. I put the hot stick in the press and let it cool a little bit and it stays straight..

Marvin

[carvingbarn]

Thank you both. I found the thread on steam bending I should have thought to do search before I posted the question. Marvin I had not thought of a heat gun. That would be quicker and easier. I will give that a try. I have a Jawhorse. You control the amount of pressure you apply but it will apply over a 1000lb of pressure if you needed it. Thanks again

[Robson Valley]

Air-dried wood, outdoors and under cover, will have a final moisture content of about 12-14%. You think it's dry, it feels dry, but some water molecules are bound up in the wood that you can't feel.

Get a length of galvanized metal rainwater downspout pipe and tie it to a step ladder with the bottom end over an electric kettle. tie a string to the stick and lower it into the top. Rag in the top to control steam flow. (My Dad's old trick for doing oak boat keels, my job was to monitor the kettle).
The deal is that the steam heat transfers energy to the remaining bound water fraction in the stick and the non cellulosic fraction of the wood softens/plasticizes. Yank out the stick and into the jig to let it cool. . . drying has nothing to do with it. How long you steam the stick is a matter of size and getting the entire stick up to 80+C.
(I'm a PhD dendrologist with a long career and graduate student interest in wood anatomy. Better than that, I'm retired.)

[Claude]

Here's another set of instructions, Randy: Veritas® Steam-Bending Instruction Booklet - Lee Valley Tools

Claude

[Magicman]

use a 6' lenth of 4" pvc. Cap one end, drill 3 or 4 small holes along length to let steam escape. Get another cap for other end drill hole in center for a rubber hose about 3' in length. attach rubber hose on cap and on Teakettle spout use small hotplate and you have a steamer. Make a stand for pipe with a 4' long 6" wide board , put a couple of pieces of wood one on each end with v cuts for the pipe. to lay in.

[cedarshavings]

can you soak a stick as an alternative to steaming?

[Claude]

Originally Posted by cedarshavings

can you soak a stick as an alternative to steaming?

No. As Robson Valley says, the heat will soften or plasticize the wood; soaking won't. An alternative to steam is using a heat gun on the bend in the wood while constantly rotating the stick so it doesn't burn.

Claude

[Marvin Little]

If you straighten the stick with dry heat you need to keep moving the heatgun back and forth to keep from scortching the bark. If you do get a little bit of discoloration it can be sanded off by lightly scraping the bark. This is the reason that I straighten my sticks before I do any scraping or bark removal. I only remove bark if it is loose or danaged. I do scrape off the rough outer bark off of dogwood, sassafras, etc.

Marvin