Cold Bendable Hardwood (Compressed Wood, Compwood®) is available in White Ash, Beech, Red Oak, White Oak and Hard Maple. Cherry and Walnut are occasionally available. This raw material for your Extreme Wood Bending™ applications may be used for Studio and Production Furniture, Architectural Millwork, Boat Restoration, Wood Turning, Floor Inlays (licensing may be required), Sculpture, Toy Making, Weaving, and Instrument Manufacturing. Please press F11 to view this page full screen.
Compressed Wood is a highly engineered, solid, cold bendable hardwood, that is uniquely suited to the most demanding Extreme Wood Bending™ projects. It is indistinguishable from clear, straight grained hardwood because that's what it is. It has just been subjected to carefully controlled, but intense longitudinal compression (approximately 100,000 lbs). The hardwood has been engineered to be extremely flexible (as long as it is moist). It is shipped to you as planks wrapped in plastic to maintain it's moisture for long periods of time (months to years) so that it can be kept on hand for current and future projects. It may be re-sawn and dimensioned with your usual tools except for planers, and routers, which often cause grain tear-out when applied in the direction of the grain to the wet wood. Cross-grain planing and climb-cut routing can be employed on the wet planks, but it is best to shape dried wood. The moist wood can be abrasive planed, cross-grain planed, turned on a lathe, and sanded in any way.
Once cold bent by hand (or with jigs, clamps and fixtures), Compressed Hardwood is then dried to fix the shape permanently.
Use Compressed Wood for Extreme Wood Bending™ to a radius of curvature as small as 5 times the thickness of the board without steam, without backing straps and without springback (1" thick board bent to a 5" radius). Ash, Red Oak, White Oak and Beech are the most commonly available bending species and we have them available year round. Maple, Cherry and Walnut are occasionaly available. We are looking at other species all the time, but most do not perform consistently enough to offer to our customers.
