Personal Development Project

After creating the rabbit chair from the gallery project, I have been enamoured with creating curves on wood. I have read books and articles about wood bending techniques, lamination, steaming and kerf-bending. 

I decided to first explore the kerfing technique of solid wood bending that used to produce guitars and boats because I would like to use the kerf as part of a decoration and discovering how wood can be made to perform in novel ways by bending and twisting behaviour of wood through kerf making. 

I have designed various kerf patterns and used band saw to cut pieces of MDF wood to experiment how the wood bends. As MDF is a medium-density fiberboard, there is no wood grain, which makes it easier to bend. However, in the middle stage of the project, I use solid timber to produce my kerf patterns. I have to take the grain direction into account, as wood are more likely to break when bend against the grain. I then also tried to cut larger kerf, when the wood bends, the kerf will form a triangle, I pour in coloured resin to make the kerf decorative. Through these experimentations, I found out the larger and the more the number the kerf, the more the wood can bend.