* Bending, not Pending.

Hot wet towels and patience are the recommended (and cheap) solutions for the WD12, don't see why they wouldn't work for your boat.

Good luck,

Laszlo

how long would one leave the towels in place?   

Hi Bruce, 

i have built shearwaters in the past and my general impression is that that design does not have any bends in it that are particularly challenging (e.g., that would lead to wood breaking)

so i would ask the following: 1) are you working from a CLC kit, 2) could there be some other mis-alignment that is occuring that is causing this and 3) can you more clearly tell us what/where the problem is  (a picture and learning to post it to the forum will really help the folks here to help understand what you are saying....  

what i have noted in shearwaters is that sometimes you get a gap between the bottom pieces and the sides at the ends that can be challenging to close up without a reasonable amount of pressure...that a little bit of beveling can quickly take care of.

so it may not be a classic bending problem where techniques like heat or steam need to come into play.....

another tool that can come into play when a lot of pressure needs to be applied is fiberglass reinforced strapping tape.....i use a lot of this on twistier boats with a lot of bends.   it applies force uniformly and doesn't stretch while its holding peices together and can be used in lieu of or in conjunction with copper wire where the pressure, if it was copper wire only, would results in the copper wire ripping through the wood.

anyway....my recommendation is to post a picture.....so we can see what we are dealing with.....becuase what you are describing sounds a bit severe for a shearwater.

h

Good idea with the tape.   We’ll post a pic when we take the hot  wet towels off.

Never mind, got it.  The wet rags plus some trust and patience did the trick.   Thanks for all the suggestions!

Never mind, got it.  The wet rags plus some trust and patience did the trick.   Thanks for all the suggestions!