Steam Bending : 16 Woods that we use.
This article is being put together to highlight a small section of the range of woods that are available to us as wood workers. It is primarily based around the hardwoods of the Australian rainforest but there are a few that are not from this area.
We have been asked if we use American woods and so far we have had limited time and resources to apply to the international side of this business but we have plans to address this in the very near future.
We see no reason why the techniques we use will not be effective with wood species from every country, so if you are looking for a new project or a small business side hustle, there is info at the bottom of the page that might interest you once you see what can be done with wood.
To begin with, a few basic questions need attention before we can get to the actual timbers we know will bend.
If you wish to jump past these questions, click the table of contents section that you wish to investigate. Let’s get started.
What is steam bending?
Steam bending is a method of using heat and moisture to soften the lignin within a piece of wood to allow it to be reshaped into new and different profiles.
Bending wood with steam is an traditional skill that was overtaken by modern methods and new materials.
The technique has cultural significance and is kept alive through small craftsman based workshops and bespoke product manufacturers, of which we consider ourselves to be one of.
What wood types are best for bending with steam?
The best type of wood to bend is straight grained and defect free, but this is not the limiting factor.
With patience and practice many wood types and grain patterns can be steam bent, but with the added disclaimer that the further you move from the best grained woods the more difficult and more frustrating the process can become.
Here at Pickers Ridge Hardwood designs, we deliberately push the boundaries of steam bending and wood selection and this has helped us to arrive at where we are today, with a solid list of woods that we know can be steam bent successfully.
Can you steam bend any wood?
There is a fair bit of discussion around this with many people stating certain things.
What we know to be true is that there are some woods that are far more difficult to work with than others, and once you understand how we go about bending these woods, you will see that there is a probability of all woods being able to be bent.
The corollary to this statement is how much time and effort is required to actually bend the most difficult woods and how many times did the wood fail before you are successful.
For most woods, it’s simply not worth the trouble to prove the comment. Having said that, sometimes it pays off to persevere with a particular wood, like these old floorboards we have bent into Timberskins.
If you want to know more about our Timberskin range
Woods that we know will bend.
The way we bend wood is not the classical method that many people are familiar with, and while it is not exactly unique, there are components of the process that are.
Using these techniques and tools that we have developed over time, we now have a solid stable of go-to woods that are the foundation of our Timberskin range of coolers.
These are also known as Koozies in the USA. We needed to test as many wood species as we could to drill down and select the most user-friendly varieties to ensure conformity and productivity.
Time is money, and wood is not something to take for granted.
Idea driven research.
The product you will see below is the end result of over 12 months of trial and error, and the end product is something we are very happy with, as are the many customers we have around the world.
These TimberSkin coolers are in almost every country now and have been well received by everyone who sees them. They are primarily sold at our stall at local markets, and how we go about this is detailed in these two articles titled “How to sell woodwork at markets, a beginners guide“, and “How to sell handmade products at markets“.
Pre-pandemic plans had us scaling up and preparing to head to our nations capital for a large event that had the potential to take Pickers Ridge as a business to the next level, and since then our focus has changed a lot.
More on this at the bottom of the page.
What woods steam bend successfully?
The list below is some of the timbers we have successfully steam bent into our Timberskin coolers over the last 4 years. Some are very obscure and it is possible that we are one of a few people who have used these woods in this way.
- Brown Walnut
- Black Bean
- Ice-cream Bean
- Johnson River Hardwood
- Mountain Ash
- Northern Silky Oak
- Pink Almond Ash
- Queensland Maple
- Queensland Walnut
- Radiata Pine
- Red Cedar
- Red Sirus
- Silkwood Maple
- Silver Ash
- Spotted Gum
- Sydney Blue Gum
To put these woods into some sort of understandable format of usability, we have this table to help show what we have found when steam bending the 10 most common woods we use.
| Wood Species | Bending Speed | Bending Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| Black Bean | slow/med | 5/10 |
| Qld Walnut | slow/med | 5/10 |
| Red Sirus | slow/med | 5/10 |
| Silkwood Maple | med/fast | 3/10 |
| Radiata Pine | med | 4/10 |
| Pink Almond Ash | med/fast | 2/10 |
| Mountain Ash | slow | 5/10 |
| Silver Ash | med/fast | 3/10 |
| Spotted Gum | slow/med | 5/10 |
| Qld Maple | med/fast | 4/10 |
The important factor in all of the information above is that it is based on how we steam bend these woods. Your outcomes are likely to differ somewhat depending on your project, and experience levels with that wood species.
The next table shows a few of the obscure woods that we have successfully bent but are based on trials only and are not considered a commercial species for our products.
Most of these are a single trial that is now a part of our private collection of timberskin coolers, but some are timbers we don’t have much of and were a small run that has since sold out.
| Wood Species | Bending Speed | Bending Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| Ice-cream Bean | med | 5/10 |
| Johnson River Hardwood | very slow | 8/10 |
| Brown Walnut | med | 5/10 |
| Northern Silky Oak | fast | 3/10 |
| Sydney Blue Gum | very slow | 7/10 |
| Red Cedar | slow | 6/10 |
Conclusions.
Steam bending wood is a fantastic process that has its roots in history, and to take this skill and be able to add to the global body of items that have been made with this process is something we are proud of.
