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Wood-bending machine offers new options
June 06, 2008
by Rocky Landsverk  Wood is not only a nearly perfect building material, many of its properties also make for an excellent design and décor medium. If only you could bend it, structurally ...Well, somebody can, with a unique Danish press called a Compwood machine. The technology was created in the 1990s by the Danish Technical Institute. It breaks up the lignum bonds and alters the cell walls in hardwood to make the wood extremely flexible (until it dries). How flexible? Compwood can be bent to a radius five times smaller than steam-bent wood, in three dimensions simultaneously, without steam or backing straps. Chris Mroz bought a Compwood machine and his engineered bendable hardwoods have found interest among furniture and instrument manufacturers, woodturners, sculpters, designers and architects. It is marketed in the United States by his company Fluted Beams LLC in Gig Harbor, Washington. Much of his business remains, however, in overseas markets. "My process utilizes a wood compression machine, the only one in the Americas, and one of less than two dozen in the world," Mroz told WHIN. "The other Compwood machines are dedicated to furniture component manufacture, mostly in Asia. I use mine also for bent furniture parts manufacture, but also for larger-scale, architectural fabrication. This includes patented processes and fabrications of my own design, but I also fabricate for other designers and for architects such as Frank Gehry. "Most of my work is in very high-end architectural applications. Often, dramatically curved parts have been specified to be built-in steel but when it is realized that hardwoods can be bent to these extreme radii in fairly large scale, a lot of buzz is created about the options this presents." Mroz has trademarked Extreme Wood Bending to define his process for structural wood bending. "Architects, designers and wood gurus that visit my shop tend to leave with their heads spinning, followed by sleepless nights considering the possibilities and opportunities this dramatically new engineered wood material presents," he said. Mroz has learned through trial and error which woods work best, what qualities need to be focused on, and how to manage moisture-content changes in the wood to maximize his Extreme Wood Bending techniques. Ash, beech, red oak, white oak, maple, cherry and walnut all perform well in this process. The raw material always needs to be free of knots and complex grain. The lumber is sourced green, directly from hardwood sawmills. Mroz is also working on using the engineered hardwoods to stabilize and minimize the checking and cracking in green logs and timbers as they dry out. This employs his patented inlay technique, which is also used in inlayed flooring and bent wooden countertops. "Inlaying green logs and timbers will provide for new feature pieces in prominent, highly visible locations in log and timber frame structures," he said. The product is both structural and highly decorative. More about the company is available at websites, www.flutedbeams.com and www.extremewoodbending.com. His email address is ; phone 253-988-2046. |
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