hi all, On my last couple boards, i’ve been doing some solid cedar and balsa rails but it is very hard to find it in 1/8 thickness here. I’ve been going through the achieves to see what others are using and keep seeing people use “bending ply”. I’ve never heard of this except on Sway’s.
Question, is this just normal 1/8 plywood sheets from the hardware store (cut to fit rail profile) or some sort of specialized woodworkers jargon?
thanks in advance for the help.
cheers
The stuff you see at the hardware store is prolly door skin. Bending ply is much more flexible. Bending ply is a specialty product that you could find or order from a lumber yard. I have used both for rails and find that if I soak the door skin for a while I can bend it around the nose with no problem.
Poplar bender is 3 ply and the center ply is thinner than in, say, luan. That makes it much more flexible across the ply (in the 4 foot direction as opposed to the 8 foot direction). I’m not sure that makes much difference as a rail layer. Daniel Hess uses it to great effect, though.
I have some in the garage, the two outter plys are very thin and the grain runs with the length of the sheet. The inner ply is much thicker, and naturally is perpendicular to the outter plys making for a very bendy sheet.
Bending ply link: http://www.northamply.com/Lite_Ply.asp
My source is Compton Lumber, Seattle…
If you can’t get it, try some 1/4" 3-ply that has been run through a surfacing planer so that one face is removed…
It can be considerably more flexible than bending ply…
Have fun…
A good quality birch in 3ply AA or AB grade is king for flex,nothing beats that,w/ the exception of just a thin paper like wood(s) called skin(s).Maple or birch,A grade, would be my choices.Herb
Thanks again Herb and Paul and everyone else, 3 ply birch is pretty easy to come by here and harvested locally so I am going to give that a shot, I want to try the alternating layers with cork like Pauls cause they look so good. not a hollow wooden though, just foam core. I tried to post some photos of my last board but they were too large a file, i’m trying to shrink them down to postable size.
cheers and enjoy your holidays
If you’re interested search the archives for the thread “EPS plywood fun gun” which I gave a step by step account of a method that sounds like what you are going to do. I love my board and not a day goes by that someone doesn’t stop me and ask about it.
Jeff
Birch ply is the one. Im in the UK and used to buy in Baltic birch ply which was 3 ply even in thickness less than 2mm. Super bendy and fine grain so it was easy to cut complex shapes with a Stanley knife and ‘pop out’ from the sheet.Used to come in 10ft x 5ft which was well handy also.
Hi Jeff, thanks for that, I don’t remember seeing that thread before, pretty much the same technique I was using except I didn’t put skins on deck or bottom. I’m stoked and off to find some wood tommorow (or maybe next day as there will be swell tommorow)
cheers