My first woodturning effort - a Windsor chair.

[Yorkie]

Thanks for reading my post Lawrence, and for your interesting comments.

Tom Thakray's steam bending set-up was very rudimentary! It consisted of an old domestic hot water cylinder layed on its side with an oblong hole slashed in the side about 9" x 4", and the copper bent up into flaps. The immersion heater in the tank had its thermostat shorted out so that it boiled continuously. A steam box about 6ft long with 6" sides made from old floorboards, with a slot underneath the box to match up with the hole gashed into the cylinder, sat on the cylinder so the steam would enter the box. One end of the box was blocked off, but there was a hole where the condensate could drain out. The other end of the box had a wooden flap, hinged by a piece of old carpet nailed on. The cylinder was filled with a watering can, then when up to steam, lengths of ash about 6ft long and 1" x 1.5" were slid into the steam box via the end flap, and left there for maybe two hours while the cylinder boiled dry. The ash was then removed, quickly bent around a former made from an old worktop cut to the desired shape, and clamped in place, then left overnight to set.

I do have a steam generator for wallpaper removal and a 6ft length of plastic drain for a steam box and had intended to do some steam bending. But really, with so many other things to do and so little time in which to do them, I lack the focus to concentrate on any one thing for hours on end to the exclusions of everything else. And of course, you'll know better than anyone Larence, that woodworking and woodturning in a domestic setting generates a lot of mess and dust - shavings everywhere. It takes me half an hour to make a mess, two hours to clear it up, then when it fails to meet the standards of the 'household quality control inspector', another half an hour to do it properly!

How we suffer for our art!