Flexible plywood how to work with it. How to bend plywood sheets? About working with large sheets

In construction, as well as apartment renovations, plywood is used only for the manufacture of flooring and formwork. reusable- so, at least, it happens in most cases. It's no secret that there are exceptions to any rules, and it may happen that it becomes necessary to make complex decorations with radius bends from plywood. In such a situation, you will certainly have to face the question of how to bend plywood? Together with the site site, we will deal with ways to independently bend plywood at home.

How to bend plywood photo

How to bend plywood: important points to know

The very first thing to understand when approaching the question of how to bend plywood is that this material is very unyielding, and in order to twist plywood into a ram's horn, you will have to work hard. In principle, everything is not so complicated as it might seem at first glance - in some cases, this process can even be quite simple.

This is one. In addition to the above, when approaching the question of how to bend plywood at home, you should also know other things. For example, despite the apparent strength, plywood - brittle material, and if you start bending it without preliminary flirting, then for sure it will break. Alternatively, cracks and delaminations will appear on the front layers, which pretty ruin the look of what you are doing. Even under factory conditions, the plywood bending process is preceded by preparatory work. In principle, preparation is the way to bend the material, which we will talk about later.

How to bend plywood with your own hands: various options

By and large, there are not so many options for bending plywood at home - just a couple. The first method is used for small-format blanks (narrow strips up to 30 cm wide), and the second option can be used for large sheets. Let's talk about them in more detail.

In both cases, it is advisable to pre-prepare a template - this is, first of all, the accuracy of bending and, secondly, a guarantee that you will not bend the product. Unbending plywood back is not a very pleasant and thankless task, fraught with the appearance of cracks and breaks.

Curved plywood: what is it and what is it used for

Another option for making bent plywood is the technology of gluing thin fragments - instead of bending a thick sheet, you bend thin plywood, and then glue them together, achieving required thickness material. This is curved plywood - according to many craftsmen, this is the best option for self-manufacturing radial products from this material. Yes, bending thin sheets is not difficult, but ...

In addition, experience in carrying out work of this kind is required. Gluing plywood is not like patching a hole in a chamber. Requires special glue and so on. In general, this technology is not very suitable for one-time work due to the high cost of various fixtures and templates. Whatever one may say, but most the best option solving the question of how to bend plywood 10mm or more, the method of technological incisions remains - at least it allows you to do without precise templates.

And in conclusion, the topic of how to bend plywood, it remains to add only one thing - or rather not even add, but once again state the fact that this is not a very rewarding business and, most importantly, laborious. For the sake of one detail, there is no reason to start with him. Another thing is if you want to mass-produce, for example, pioneer drums or standard-shaped arches. It is already in vogue here and not every company involved in their production can offer affordable prices to people. Although, having tried to make one such product, you will understand why its price cannot be cheap.

Very often in the process of manufacturing furniture or some other products from plywood, it becomes necessary to create elements of irregular shapes. Of course, such blanks can be cut from a single sheet, however, in this case, an unreasonably large consumption of material is obtained. There is another way to give the wood the desired bends, in this article we will talk about how to bend plywood.

First, let's understand what plywood is. These are thin sheets of wood glued together so that the fibers of each layer are located in different directions. This way of producing the material makes it more durable, but also increases the bending resistance. That is why it is easiest to bend the plywood that has few layers.

For industrial production furniture given material bent in a special way: the sheet is clamped in matrices, steamed, and then bent using special equipment.

If you want to make a wooden part yourself irregular shape, there are several ways to do this: gluing layers, steaming or making cuts. Below we will take a closer look at each method.

Steaming the material

processing process

Before bending 10 mm thick plywood, it must be treated with hot steam. You can do it yourself in the following way:

hold the leaf over a container of boiling water for a long time;
use an iron with continuous steam supply.

If you have a large enough container in which you can place the processed fragment, you have the opportunity to boil the plywood. To make it easier for you to determine the right time for such processing, use the table below:

If you don’t have a suitable dish on hand, you can simply wet the plywood. To do this, put a sheet of material in a bath of water and leave for a while. You can determine the soaking period based on the thickness of the wood, the direction and angle of the bend. It should also be noted that when soaking the material in hot water(over 60°C) the processing time will be 2 times higher than when boiling. In case you are using cold water, the soaking time will increase at least 20 times.

Please note that it is also impossible to steam plywood for too long, otherwise the layers of wood may separate from each other.

After the material has lain in the water for a sufficient time, it is bent in the right place and fixed until the part is completely dry. Please note that the largest degree of bending can only be done if you bend the sheet across the wood fibers. We also note that if you process the material with your own hands, you can combine steaming with soaking. At the same time, only the place that is subsequently supposed to be bent is held above the steam.

Fixing the part

Note that it is possible to give the desired shape to the part in one or more stages. It depends on how steep the angle of the bend should be. If this indicator is large enough, then the necessary manipulations should be carried out in several stages. After soaking or steaming, the plywood sheet is slightly bent and left until complete drying. After that, similar work is carried out again and again until the desired shape is achieved. If the angle of curvature is needed small, then you can cope with the task in one step.

After you have completed all the necessary manipulations with wood, bent plywood should be fixed. This is done in two ways:

Some heavy object is placed in place of the curvature, the ends of the part are tightened with a rope and placed on supports.
The resulting part is fixed in a special template and fixed with a rope or adhesive tape.

As such a template, you can use any suitable design that has the desired curvature and sufficient strength. Very often, for such purposes, a template is made from fiberboard sheets. If you want to make an arch-shaped part out of plywood, a steamed piece of material can be fixed in doorway using self-tapping screws.

In the event that there is a need to create a detail big size and complex shape, it is best to use the pattern from steel sheet. In this case, the workpiece should be bent together with plywood, fastening both materials together. Separate steel element from wood is possible only after the latter has completely dried.

Bending plywood by notching

In this paragraph, we will look at how to bend thick plywood. As a rule, the notching method is used when processing material with a thickness of 16-22 mm. The fact is that it is rather difficult to steam or soak such a sheet, therefore, in those metas where it is supposed to create curvature, special cuts are made. They have a conical shape and are made using a manual milling machine.

You should be aware that the sheet can only be cut to a layer with fibers of the opposite direction, otherwise the material may crack. Creation of cuts different widths allows you to change the angle of the product.

After the incisions are made, the part is bent as needed and fixed in that position. Then a sheet of veneer is glued on top using epoxy glue or PVA, after which the workpiece is left to dry completely. You can bend the product both by cuts inward and outward.

Gluing plywood

In order to create a plywood product with a certain bend, you first need to make a template. After that, a thin sheet of material is bent according to the pattern, the same is done with the following layers. It is important to remember that each new leaf wood must be laid on the previous one, alternating the direction of the fibers. You can glue the layers together using PVA or epoxy glue.

After the part has completely dried, its ends must be processed grinder, eliminating bumps and fragments of dried leaked glue.

Curved plywood furniture, photo:

To make a beautiful and high-quality product, it is necessary to take into account some subtleties:

It is more difficult to bend a part across the wood fibers than along it. Therefore, the bending angle of the product in the first case will be smaller than in the second.
Parts obtained in the course of work must be stored in dry rooms where the humidity of the air does not exceed 10%.
After steaming or boiling wood, you should not wait until it cools down. The material during processing must be warm.

In this article, we have covered all available ways thanks to which you can bend plywood with my own hands using available tools and instruments.

How to bend plywood, video:

Ways to bend plywood that you can use at home. You can give the desired bend to almost all types of plywood of different thicknesses.

Plywood is used in construction and furniture production. When it becomes necessary to bend plywood parts, you can use several methods: use flexible plywood, contact a specialized company, or bend the part yourself.

Flexible plywood can be purchased at building supermarkets. It is of small thickness (3-4 mm) and is suitable for constructing arches. Cut out the part of the required size and fasten it with screws to the frame. China-made flexible plywood is on sale - this is optimal combination prices and quality.

To create more rigid bent structures, steaming, notching, gluing, and combinations of these methods are used.

Steaming

In industrial processing, steaming is carried out using special installations and the necessary bending is carried out by a press. At home, a sheet of plywood can be steamed over containers with boiling water or an iron with uninterrupted steam supply.

Also, a sheet or part can simply be soaked in water (in the bathroom, for example). The soaking time depends on the thickness of the sheet and the direction of the bend. For bakelite plywood, it is less than for bakelite plywood. Below is a table for calculating the cooking time for plywood at a temperature of 90 - 100 C.

At home, it is quite difficult to ensure the boiling of sheets or parts: there is no container of the required size, it is quite expensive to maintain the boiling temperature for several hours. An alternative to boiling at home is soaking in warm or cold water:

for soaking at a water temperature of 60C, the time increases by 1.5 - 2 times
for soaking at a temperature of 15-30C 15-20 times.

After soaking, the part is attached to the template, fixed and kept until completely dry. The greatest allowable bend after steaming or soaking is possible when bending across the fibers. At home, it is better to combine steaming with moisturizing. Only the place of the bend is steamed and the top layer of veneer is moistened.

Plywood notching

This method is used for bending plywood sheets with a thickness of 16 to 22 mm. In the place of the intended bend, cuts are made with a cutter. The depth of the notch should not exceed half the thickness of the sheet and reach the veneer layer of the opposite direction, but not violate it - the sheet may crack. You can make cuts of different widths, which will ensure that the angle on one side of the plywood will be different. In this way, plywood is bent for the walls of the boat, for example.

The workpiece is clamped on the mold and a sheet of veneer is glued on top. Drying time - about a day. For bonding use PVA or epoxy glue. You can glue the part with cuts inward and vice versa. In the second case, voids are formed. But they will not affect the rigidity of the part.

Gluing

To create a curved part, it is cut out with a small tolerance (up to 5 mm) from a thin sheet of plywood. The detail (pattern) is laid out on a sheet so that the directions of the veneer alternate in finished product- this will provide greater rigidity and ductility of the part. Layers of plywood glued together epoxy glue and clamped on the workpiece for shaping with clamps for a day. After complete drying, the part is sanded and the bumps and glue along the edges are removed.

To get a quality part as a result, it is important to consider the following points:

the bend radius across the fibers is much smaller than along
bent parts must be stored in a room with low humidity (no more than 10%)
steamed and soaked parts must be bent with warm

For bending complex structures and large quantities bent parts It is worth contacting a company that processes wood and plywood. In their arsenal are powerful steam plants, structures for tradition different forms and hot presses.

You can choose how to bend plywood from the suggested methods - they are simple enough to use at home. Provide parts with adequate humidity and wait for complete drying. Use quality adhesives and fix the parts well.

All photos from the article

In this article we will talk about how to bend plywood at home. That is, the listed methods can be applied without the use of specialized equipment and preparations that change the structure of wood.

But, before bending plywood at home, let's decide what this material is and what its structure is.

Main characteristics of the material

Plywood is a multi-layered material of a slab type. As a basis for production, veneer sheets are used, which are stacked on top of each other in a cross position and glued together with a composition containing resins and formaldehydes.

Strength finished material provided by the cross-position of the veneer. That is, in one plate, the transverse and longitudinal directions of the fibers alternate, which means that additional resistance to mechanical stress is acquired.

This is a significant advantage, but if you have to bend plywood with your own hands, high strength turns into a disadvantage. Let's find out how to bend plywood at home and get the desired result.

Steaming and soaking plywood

Steaming plywood is perhaps the most common way to deform glued sawn timber. The advantage of the method is that it is equally relevant in both industrial and domestic conditions.

The bending instruction is nothing complicated, provided that you are going to deform the material no thicker than 4 mm.

From the tool we need the following:

kitchen stove;
large saucepan with a lid;
strong, resistant to high temperatures, rope;
kitchen mittens.

Plywood is a natural veneer sheet glued together and is by far one of the most common lumber. This popularity is due to its high strength, and, at the same time, ease of processing. Its use has found application in furniture production, construction, shipbuilding, design and other industries. One of the most important properties of plywood is its ability to change shape as a result of bending. This process only at first glance seems complicated, but how to bend plywood can be mastered by a non-specialist.

Advantages of plywood

The material is not afraid high humidity and changes in ambient temperature. In addition, it is distinguished the following features, speaking of undeniable advantages over natural wood in some cases:

high strength;
durability and wear resistance;
ease of processing and installation;
compatible with other building materials;
cracks, including through ones, are absent.

The main differences between lumber are related to the type of wood from which they are made, therefore, when purchasing material, it is necessary to take into account the subsequent scope of its application.

Classification

Speaking about the classification of such material as plywood, it should be noted that there are four grades of this lumber in total.

The first grade is the best. However, it is also the most expensive. It is distinguished by a minimum of flaws and deformations.
The product of the second grade allows for minor defects such as cracks and knots.
The third grade is distinguished by the presence of numerous defects, both in the wood itself and in the lumber itself, such as leakage of the adhesive layer and the presence of inserts.
Timber of the fourth grade is suitable only for the manufacture of packaging containers. However, it is also the cheapest, as it has the largest number all sorts of defects.

Flexibility of plywood

Plywood has a very high bending strength factor. For this reason, bending is one of the main methods of its processing. Bent plywood is widely used in products.

The ease of bending a plywood sheet directly depends on its thickness. Thin sheets are easier to bend, thick sheets are more difficult. In this case, the material bends better along the fibers than across, and the bending angle in this case is the largest. How to bend plywood in the production of various products, consider below. Currently, several methods of this technological process are known.

Method by heating or steaming

Before bending the sheet, it must be thoroughly heated using steam. For this it may be suitable steam iron or a tank of boiling water. If necessary, the sheet can be impregnated hot water. The processing time directly depends on the thickness of the material and the temperature of the steam or boiling water. However, too long steaming can lead to the destruction of the adhesive layer and delamination of plywood.

Having steamed the sheet, it is bent in the desired configuration, after which this position is fixed with any material at hand, for example, with a rope. The sheet is fixed until completely dry and takes the desired shape.

Cutting and notching method

This method is used when the thickness of the plywood sheet does not exceed 22 mm. It consists in creating conical cuts on the surface of the material with a depth of no more than half of the thickness of the sheet. It is desirable to do them using milling machine, as a different method can lead to cracks and splits.

Having made the necessary cuts, we bend and fix the sheet, treat the surface with glue and apply a sheet of veneer. In this position, the product is left for 24 hours.

Gluing method

Before bending plywood in this way, a pattern is made. Next, the sheet bends along it, smeared with glue and a new sheet of plywood is applied. In this case, the directions of the fibers must alternate. After gluing the layers, fix them with clamps and leave for about a day. After that, the workpiece is subject to the grinding process. This is done in order to remove the remaining glue and give the product a beautiful appearance.

It should be noted that after processing, the product should not be stored in damp rooms.

There are times when you can use a special thin (3-4 mm) plywood specially designed for bending. It is used in the manufacture of products such as arches in doorways.