When I posted this photo the other day, I did not have time to attach a note of explaination. I am doing so now.

When I started making Windsor chairs twenty-one years ago, Michael Dunbar's book, and another by Jim Rendi, were my source of how-to information. When steam-bending a chair comb, both books demonstrated the use of a two sided, clam shell jig, between whose two jaws the heated comb stock was placed after being pulled from the steam-box. The bending jig was tightened by placing a number of bar clamps across the jig jaw comb sandwich, on both the top and bottom faces. Then tightening each clamp in turn until the hot comb bent until it met both the front and back curves on the two jaw faces. The only problem was that I neeoded to be an eight armed octopus to tighten all five or six clamps evenly as I closed the jig. In a classroom situation with several students working together this can work. By your lonesome, tightening one clamp at a time as you work from clamp to clamp trying to close the faces of the clam shell together releases tension on the other clamps, causing the jaws to spring openlike an enraged jack-in-the-box. Everything blows apart. Clamps fall on your toes. And the comb stock ruined. There had to be a better solution.

Sometime later I watched a demonstration of comb bending by Curtis Buchanan, on Roy Underhill's TV show. Curtis used a flat panel, (plywood? No explaination was given) on which the curved front jaw was securely screwed. At the far end of the panel a windlass was secured. A newly steamed length of ash could be placed up against the curved  rear face of the jig, ropes, or a flexible back plate with ropes attached to the plate ends, quickly feed thru the windlass, and the windlass cranked until the steamed stock was bent in place against the curved jig. Quick. No exploding clamps falling on the floor. And enough bending force to pull both ends of the hot comb stock tightly against the jig. Resulting in a sweeter curve.

Sometime later, later, Roy and Curtis demonstrated bending a bow on a bending jig screwed to one of the wooden posts on the show's set. Again an inspiration. Downward force on the stock in a jig fastened to the building. Even heavy work-benches start to move when you are forcing hot bow stock around the a jig, when you pull the wood horizontally.

I have a large number of bending jigs, so I wanted to rationalize how I mounted them. I  ended up building a 2x12  into the shop, with space behind the 2x so I could drive 1/2 inch carriage bolts thru the vertical post. All of my bending jigs have either two, or four, matching holes drilled through them from front to back. A jig can be removed, and another quickly installed by simply loosening, and removing two/four nuts, putting the new jig in place on the exposed bolts, and re-tightening the nuts. In lieu of a sail-boat style ratcheting windlass, I bolted a standard come-along to the bottom of the vertical post. This gives me a system that allows me to choose between two forms of bending. Lighter, springier, bow stock can be bent by hand around one of the jigs, or the stiffer harder to bend combs can be bent using the come-along and flexible backer plate, as shown above. To keep even pressure on the backing plate, and prevent it from developing kinks, I bend all my comb-stock in 35 to 36 inch lengths, so the board supports the plate evenly across it's length, as the plate, in turn, applies even pressure against the wood being bent.

That's it for today. Thank you for stopping by. STB