Making a Bent Wood Lamination Former

A few more details if you expand the description. I only cover one type of form and process in this video, and along a uniform radius.

There's a fair bit of information on glu-lam and bent wood forms online. Not all of it good if I'm honest.
The type of form shown in this video is a male + female press. These are best for glued laminations, particularly those whose laminated edges will be on show, as they give uniform, consistent results.

You can also use either just a female or male form, using clamps or straps to hold the lamination to the form. Personally, I would say this is best suited to steam bends for the most part. Vacuum is an excellent option for wider sheet veneers.

How thick your strips or veneers for your lamination will need to be depends on a few things. In this video mine, at 4mm, were quite thick. As I was using a shallow, uniform radius, this was fine. If you want more acute radii. undulations and/or twists, it may be necessary to use much thinner veneers of 1.5 or 1mm for example.

There's lots of opinions on glues. PVA's, PU's, powder resins like Cascamite or epoxies like I used are all fine. As mentioned in the video, PVA's (and PU's) have some elasticity which may be desirable. Cascamite and epoxies are a more rigid bond, indeed "phenol resorcinol formaldehyde" adhesives like cascamite, as well as epoxies, have been widely used in laminations for a long time in construction, boatbuilding and furniture making. On lighter coloured woods, I'd recommend epoxy as PU's and cascamite can be a bit showy. The latter do have excellent gap filling properties though which could be beneficial and, on darker woods, their slightly more showy glue line isn't an issue.
Check your chosen glues pot and cure times, as well as suitability for laminations with distributors and manufacturers.

Cheers.

Easy Composites EL2 Laminating Resin - https://www.easycomposites.co.uk/el2-...