Just wanted to share this. I broke apart a tack-glued rough shaped blank to chamber the big stringer. After doing the chambering with foam inserts I tried using Shrink Wrap to clamp it, thinking it might keep damage to a minimum. I’ve approched clamping shaped foam several different ways in the past and this is by far the best result. No damage to the foam with super tight seams and really easy to control the pressure. Really stoked.
Always wanted to try that. Good to know it works before hand. I bought a bunch of Echotech blanks a few years back. Alot of them had shrink wrap around them. I’ve always wondered if that was the method they used. Lowel
Gene - saw your post on Instagram - I was in the same position last week with thinking how I was going to avoid damage on a chambered stringer bundle. I opted to not tack and knock apart and chamber before the glue up. I know by doing this I was having to leave a little more meat on the bones to ensure no break through.
I will proceed with shrink wrap in the future. Thanks for sharing.
Hope to see you up at the boardroom show.
My brother has been using shrink wrap for about 10 years. We’ve made a bunch of compsand boards with it. I find it best if there are 2 people to do the wrapping, but he’s done a bunch of boards himself.
You can get a 1000 ft roll for $20 at home depot
…hello Gene, the other day I made a stringer from Okume wood and chambered it but I had the pieces a bit stubborn. I used inner tubes but I felt that in that situation did not had enough strength to perfectly do the job.
So my question is what do you think about this method when you have not so perfect wood etc? Can you perform with enough strength?
Thanks
Hi Reverb, I think it could get tighter than inner tube bands just because you can make as manny wraps as you want. It’d be interesting to test out that theory somehow. What impressed me was the evenness of pressure on the top and bottom which might be better on irregularities. Also I liked the way you could spread the pressure out evenly over the entire board.
My only concern with this would be a tendency to twist. I notice when I wrap a pallet full of boxes, even though I try not to pull it too tight, the stack will twist. You can definitely create a fair amount of pressure with the stuff.
Watch out, doesn’t sand well. Found out the hard way, lol
Like with everything we do, it all boils down to good technique.
Like when your wrapping the boxes, careless technique = a crooked stack, thoughtful technique = a good result.
The wrap completely released from the glue so sanding it wasn’t an issue. I just did the normal glue clean-up and finished it out.