Bending the Bows Part I

The long white object laying along the sidewalk in the above photo is my soaking container. It is composed of two 10 foot lengths of 6" diameter PVC drain pipe joined in the middle and closed with a fixed cap at one end and a removable threaded plug at the other. It is filled with water, and four 16' x 2" x 3/8" lengths of Douglas Fir that are destined to be some of the bows for the wagon roof.
One way to bend the bows is to steam them for about an hour and then bend them around your stanchions. The other is soaking them and then bending. Since I didn't have a twenty foot long steam box or the propane tank, burner, and container to make the steam and didn't want the added expense of purchasing all those things, I decided on soaking.
I figured two weeks was a good round soaking time, so I put in some water and wood and let it sit. I rolled it back and forth once a day just to agitate the wood and make sure it was evenly wet.

Learning Curve Note: I soaked the wood in batches, it would have been easier and less time consuming to use larger diameter PVC and soak all the wood at once. Also I experienced some algae growth on two of the boards in the first batch, after that I added about a 1/4 cup of bleach to the soaking water and did not have any further problems.

Continued in next post.