I recently had a student wanting to try making a ukulele in my grade 11 woodshop. Knowing nothing about luthering or bending wood, I dove down the youtube rabbit hole for some research and design. A staff member donated a rice cookr and I ended up building a chimney stack steam pipe. I then tinkered for a week with bending attempts… many failures led me to add insulation to the pipe and increase the duration I steamed the wood before attempting to bend. . I finally had a piece come out incredibly supple on Friday. I had it in the form over the weekend. Below is the final test and some photos of the progressions and failures.
if at first you don’t succeed…
