DIY Curved LED Pendant Lamp | steam bending wood | #rocklerbentwoodchallenge

everyone on this episode we're gonna have a lot of fun bending wood and making this LED chandelier [Music] the first thing we need to do for this project is to make a steam vending setup we're going to use rocklers steam bidding kit which comes with everything you need the reservoir that's powered you got your hose for the steam transfer the coupling all the hardware if you want to build a wooden box with a latch that opens to let the wood in it out but we're actually just going to use a PVC pipe and that will work with the Rockler kit tip with the Rockler kit a PVC steam box takes about 20 minutes to make if that I started by drilling a half inch hole in a PVC end cap so I can attach rocklers brass hose fitting to the 4 inch PVC pipe you need to be able to open the other end of the box to insert and remove wood and then close it off while steaming to make a removable end cap I used PVC primer and glue to attach a female threaded coupling to the pipe this accepts a male threaded end cap which I can remove when I need to get wood in or out of the steam chamber I then cut down some scrap lumber to make support blocks for the PVC box to rest off [Music] [Applause] [Music] we've got our supports cut one from a two-by-four of one from a 2x6 so there'll be a slope to the PVC pipe this will allow water to drain down as it condensate but also allows steam to rise up so the whole pipe gets filled then drilled out holes every six inches along the length of the PVC these holes allow for 1/2 inch dowels to be inserted through the pipe the Dow's will hold the wood in the middle of the pipe so that all sides of the wood are evenly steamed off-camera I drilled a drain hole at the lower end of the pipe for water to escape from as the steam condenses in the pipe to finish it off I drilled a small hole for a cheap meat thermometer that will tell me the temperature inside the box who long day here I am sweaty but all good it's now time to rat out the channels for the LED strips in this piece of maple to do that I'm just going to use a plunge router and we're going to do it in the wood while it's still flat before bending it just because I think that'll be easier I'm not even sure how I would go about cutting and even channel down the middle of a bent piece of wood I started by routing a 3/4 inch channel that was 1/8 inch deep and then cut a deeper 1/2 inch wide channel along the same centerline this two-step process creates a deeper channel for the LED strips with a rabbet around it the rabbit will support 1/8 inch wide acrylic that I'll be using to diffuse the LED strips later I then used my table saw to split the board into three one and a half inch wide pieces one for each light bar I routed the three led channels in one board before cutting the smaller strips for the light bars on the table saw because I thought the router might be difficult to hold flat on thinner pieces [Music] ripping down the last strip I had a really scary kickback moment but fortunately I always stand to the side when I cut a thin strip like this so nobody got hurt I then moved on to making some two-sided forms for Benny the wood strips into what I guess I described as a flattened S shape I cut the forms on my x-carve which does a great job for these types of forms however I don't want to spend too much time on these since well you'll see in a few minutes why [Music] I put the wood into the steam box and during the 90-minute steamy I screwed one side of the form to my assembly table thinking I'd be able to clamp the other side on quickly using clamps to bend the wood against the first side [Music] [Music] [Music] the first bin went pretty smoothly but when I tried to bend the wood back the other way to add the other side of the form well this is embarrassing adult temper tantrums are not a good look on me or anyone bright side though after seeing myself on film I'm pretty sure it won't be happening again so round one with the curly maple was a failure or what I like to call a learning experience and I really think it had to do a lot with it being maple and with the grain of the wood having a lot of run-out in it so I went out and picked up some pieces of white oak that have a really straight grain now this is kiln dried which is an ideal green lumber would have been better or air dried even but this is all I could get locally quickly so I think we've got a shot we're gonna see if it'll work with the kiln dried white oak with the really nice straight grain with very little run out I then cut the light bars to link that my miter saw and it was time to give steam bidding a third try [Music] the oak was definitely bending a little bit easier than the maple but on the bend back I started to see a little cracky I learned my lesson though and kept my cool I realized the crack wasn't too bad this time and decided to try stabilizing it was super good I also decided to test a technique where you just use a plastic bag as your steam chamber instead of a wood box or PVC pipe and I thought it best to test it out of the piece that was already cracked so I didn't waste another new piece of wood if it didn't work so I think we have a winner that's gonna work for these convex and concave bags it's been a lot easier here because the bag kept the seam on it as it was being transferred over and gave you longer to get the clamps on so I'm gonna try this with some bigger bags for the whole piece tomorrow on the other two and I think we can salvage this one and make it work with a little bit of superglue on those crack parts I think we're on the homestretch let's get some sleep and try again to get it 100% right tomorrow I shared this steam bending saga on my Instagram stories as it was happening Izzy Swan saw the stories and sent me a message suggesting that it sometimes helps to soak kiln-dried wood overnight before steaming Izzie is a mad genius when it comes to anything related to wood so I definitely took this advice to heart at this point while researching how to improve my bending process I also watched this video on the create channel by Andre gobo where he makes this incredible steam vent bench and it gave me an idea to tweak my process side note if you haven't seen that video link in the description go watch it you'll thank me it's awesome at any rate I decided that I would replicate this skateboard wheel bending jig that Andre uses in that video the jig is really simple it's just to skateboard wheels and you use a steel cross brace piece to attach them and then use a couple lag bolts or screws to bolt that down to a sturdy workbench so I'll link to the wheels I use that there are tons on Amazon the main thing is you want them to be nice and flat and hard and you want them to be tall enough that your workpiece can rest against them I went with 70 millimeters with these tweaks I was back to steaming with high hopes and fortunately the rakesh steam kit was easy to adapt to used with a bag and got the temperature up to 210 Fahrenheit with the skateboard wheel jig you are freeform bending just using your bodyweight to bend the wood as you gradually work it through the wheels as I bent the wood I would screw in stop blocks to hold the bit once I had a bin I liked I let the piece sit overnight so the curve could set and then came back the next morning to repeat the process that make the second bend in the other direction one of the main benefits of this approach is keeping the bag on and continuing to seam the wood while bending it gave me a lot more time to do spin which is a huge benefit when you're working alone there are some drawbacks to this freeform approach however it wouldn't be ideal if you're trying to achieve an exact radius or make repeated identical curves for this project however some variation between light bars was totally fine so it worked great another suggestion from Izzy was using aluminum flat bar as a brace while bending I didn't have any handy so I tried using PVC trim as a brace during this process it helped a bit but I still got some small cracks so I think aluminum definitely would have been a better choice if you're trying to spring so I'm about to deem old the last and final Bend on this project and I finally got one that been perfect it didn't crack it all there's nothing to patch up and I'm pretty happy about that so let's get over to finishing off these lights and get my LEDs installed in them [Music] [Applause] [Music] since this is a chandelier and it will hang from the ceiling no one's going to be looking at it to close up but this in mind I decided to try to hide the cracks in the first two light strips I started by using some CA glue to stabilize the cracks I then rubbed oak wood putty in all the cracks let it set up for about 20 minutes and then sanded everything flush I was really happy how well the putty hid the cracks I really don't think anyone's gonna notice unless I point it out to them I'm using 1/8 inch wide acrylic sheet to diffuse the LEDs I picked the sheet up on eBay and cut strips of it on my table saw with a fine finishing place I made multiple cuts and snuck up on the width of the LED Channel so impressed fit into the chip I then use my disk sander to round off the ends of the acrylic strips so that they'd fit nicely into the rounded channel aids I made a last-minute design decision to round off the ends of the would like bars to match the curvature of the LED channel and I then used my disk sander to finish sanding to the lie I could then do a test-fit of the acrylic strips into the LA Channel and I was happy to see that there was a nice pressure fit I also tried bending the acrylic by heating it up with a torch and pressing it into the curved LED channel while it's still hot so the wood was essentially a mold now this worked just fine but I didn't really see any advantage functionally or aesthetically since the acrylic was flexible enough and just pressure fit in without being bent to shape so I Nix the acrylic bending for the others you like boys I then gave the light bars a final sanding up to 220 grit before applying maker brand simple finish to the wood I use my Rockler bench cookies to lift the light bars off the work bench while applying finish there are so many different applications for bench cookies I use them just about every day in my workshop you don't have a set then just do yourself a favor go pick one up you'll be amazed how often you end up using all right before we install the LEDs I would just want to make clear I'm not an electrician you should definitely consult an electrician if you want to do something like this and consult them make sure everything is up to code and safe okay so on that note talking about heat and stressing again I'm not an electrician so this is just what I'm doing not what anyone else out there should do I'm planning to come back later and put some sixteenth inch aluminum bar underneath the LEDs to help dissipate the heat I've got that on order though so I don't have it here yet and I want to get these hooked up so temporarily I'm just going to use some aluminum foil tape in the channels if there's any electricians out there maybe you can leave a comment and will let me know your thoughts on whether what I'm thinking is along the right lines or what you might do in a situation like this light to help dissipate heat from the LED strips I then drilled holes that would hold the suspension wire connectors and for the power wires to get into the LED Channel next i chiseled out the inside of the channel a bit deeper right around the entry point for the wiring this provides some space behind the LED strips for the wires to enter otherwise there would be a noticeable hotspot here due to the wires pushing the LED strip closer to the diffuser so usually people just wire up LED strips by connecting power and ground at the end of this strip because well when you buy a strip that's where the connector usually is and that makes sense right well you can actually connect power and ground on these 12 volt LED strips anywhere on the strip and there's actually some advantages to connecting them in the middle of this strip when you supply power to an LED strip each LED it crosses is going to cause some voltage drop and the lower the voltage the less bright the LED will be so when it kind of spreads out from the middle outwards the longest running LEDs is going to be shorter than if it has to go across the whole strip to get to the LED at the other end that means the LEDs will run more efficiently dissipate less Heat etc etc it's a good thing to do when you can and in this case is again a pride another aesthetic benefit because we can drop the wire for the power not on exactly in the middle but close to it and put it right next to our hanging kit so that the wire for the power runs up right next to our hanging cord and is less noticeable when you look at the light I use CA glue to attach the LED strips now while all of these strips do have it heats it back in and I used it it's been my experience that the adhesive backing will always fail over time i soldered the power and ground wires to the contacts on the LED strip and then cover them with hot glue to give the connections a bit more strength and electrical isolation so this is one of those projects where I started with a rough idea but I didn't really know what the final design was exactly gonna be so what I've done is just taking three scraps of plywood here and attached to you sort of quick release ceiling mounts that allow the wires from the lights to be quickly connected disconnected and now with these three separate mounts kind of like marionettes for the light I can just attach those to a single sort of base piece try different shapes and arrangements of the lights really quickly hold it up see how it looks until I find something I like so let's play around and figure that out so just in case you're wondering this is just a temporary mount so I can show how it hangs and looks for this I've got a final mount designed and in my head but I wanted to run everything by an electrician before I go through the trouble of building it just to make sure that the final install I have in my mind will work like I think it will all right I like how this is looking so I think we're just gonna do a temporary install for now get the beauty shots so we can wrap this video up and if you do want to check out the permanent install after I call an electrician then make sure to follow me on instagram because i'll be sharing it over there [Music] now this one was a bit of a struggle but in the end I'm really happy how this steam bent chandelier came out I hope you enjoyed it and are inspired to go try some steam bending on your own and hopefully avoid some of the mistakes that I made that's it for this time and I'll see you next time

Channel: Modustrial Maker

Views: 250,546

Rating: 4.8751311 out of 5

Keywords: DIY, modern, LED strips, LED strip, LED chandelier, chandelier, pendant light, LED pendant light, ceiling light, how to make a pendant light, woodworking, LED, woodworking project, how to make, how to build, how to make an LED light, DIY LED light, DIY LED lighting, LED lighting, DIY creators, DIY chandelier, steam bending, how to bend wood, how to steam bend wood, steam bending wood, rocklerbentwoodchallenge

Id: Ks1U9D3ccxo

Length: 18min 2sec (1082 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 03 2019