Bent Wood Beautiful Strength

[Sanford] Hi Sanford Smith here with Penn State Extension.

Today the topic is bent wood.

Now, I know you might be thinking, what is bent wood?

Well, you're going to find out about that today because it's a very important wood product.

I'm joined by Eddie Oberholtzer.

He has a firm in Leola, PA that specializes in bent wood and bending wood.

Eddie, what is bent wood?

[Eddie] So bent wood is the the art or the working of taking a solid wood piece and forming it into a bent form of structure for either furniture or other applications.

But what we do here is mostly for bent wood furniture parts.

Furniture parts.

[Sanford] Okay, so how do you do that In a nutshell?

[Eddie] First of all, it starts with good quality North American hardwoods, mostly procured in the Pennsylvania or surrounding 200 mile radius of our plant here in Leola.

Starting with grain lumber that we bring in and put on sticks, air dried in various degrees of air drying and finish it off in a dry kiln process.

This process, we take the lumber to, let's say, 10 to 15% moisture content.

And in a low temperature method so that it can remain flexible so we can bend it at a later time.

What I mean by later time, the material gets taken into the shop, cut up into specific size, whatever we need for the match or bending presses.

And from there it gets put into what we call steam boxes or steam tanks.

Different wood species need to be steam, different amount of times, length of time, I should say to make soft.

And so we need to make it soft so that it can be formed into different molds.

Some shapes are very shallow.

Others are bent to a 180 degree.

So we may steam from anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours to make these parts pliable, put into presses of various shapes, many different presses that we have to bend it into the shape.

Some are held in shape right on the presses, others have taken off and dried in different processes.

[Sanford] What goes on with the wood when you, when you steam Treat it like that?

[Eddie] It's not a boiling because it's not laying in actual water.

In the steam tanks as we call it.

The wood is being steamed, let's say at five p.s.i steam pressure, which is slightly above boiling point.

It is making the wood fibers soft and makes them pliable.

It is still not flexible like a noodle, cooking noodles, but it is softer and pliable, makes it so that you can bend it into shape and then it needs to be dried in in the drying process that sets up the lignin, which is the natural glue in it.

Each wood piece sets up the lignin and that's what sets it to shape.

[Sanford] So let's talk about some of the specialty products.

[Eddie] In ‘68, dad started providing the wooden wheels for the Amish and Mennonite buggies for the community that we live in.

And also, as you'll see, some of the bent frames for the Amish buggies, you'll have the curved subframe.

[Sanford] Tell us about some of the furniture parts, components that you produce here, I know you're doing chair backs, Arms of chairs and some other parts.

[Eddie] The furniture components is the major part of our business today.

Since we, we sold off the wheel making business approximately 30 years ago, and we’re strictly into furniture parts and other parts that go with that.

But furniture parts, you have the bent chair back, you have the upright lumbar slat That fits your back as well as all sorts of chair arms, low back chairs, high back chairs, all sorts of chair parts, mostly going to the chair and furniture industry.

There's also some large hoops that are bent for table rims or table skirts, as some people call them.

We actually do have two items.

We do, We do replacement cart top bowls for the antique auto cars.

And there's also a part that we did for a Pennsylvania manufacturing company, the Piper Cub airplanes.

[Sanford Smith] Yes. Right.

[Eddie] The Piper Cub airplanes have a wooden bent strip around the end of the wing.

So we make a part called, wingtip bow.

[Sanford] Bending of wood.

Not only is a very frugal, so to speak, and it uses wood well, but it also strengthens that wood, doesn't it?

[Eddie] More so than just the amount of money that stayed because you're not wasting is the strength that's generated from following the grains on a curve the strength there, instead of having the short grain that you would have if you cut things out of a block, huge huge difference.

[Sanford] Well, this has been great.

Thanks very much for joining me today.

It's been fascinating, and I hope people now have learned a little bit more about what bent wood means and what it is.

And and thank you for joining me.

[Eddie] And thank you for coming in to our shop.