Today I finished the construction of the bending form. First I finished cutting out the rings. There are five of them.

The Look of Five Rings

The next thing to do is to stack the rings up into a cylindrical form. I did that by screwing them together using my usual #8 wood screws.

Screwing the Rings Together

I put four screws into each ring at the compass points. I staggered them in the different layers so that I would not be screwing one screw on top of another. Once I got all five rings screwed together I measured the depth of the cylinder.

Measuring the Cylinder Depth

Here is a closeup of the measurement.

Closeup

Looks like about 3 13/16" deep. I had calculated that it would be about 3 19/32", but wood expands and shrinks with the moisture content, so that size might not be exact. In any case, the form is wide enough to accommodate my 3 1/2" hoop board.

Here is how the board is going to be clamped to the form.

The Hoop Board in Place

A closeup.

Closeup

When the form is clamped vertically in the bench vise, it looks like this.

Clamped

When I bend the wood with the heat gun I will have to secure it to the form using something that is more robust than the spring clamp, so I think I will just put a hole in it and screw it down with a hex head machine bolt. The hole will be in the waste end of the board and will get cut off before I finish glueing the hoop together. Here is the bolt secured to the form.

Bolt

The nut is inside the form. Some might say that the nut is the one doing this project.

Now I need to figure out a way to soak the board before I bend it. That is for a different day.