Bending Pallet Wood the "wrong way"

[Woody2Shoes]

My 2d's-worth:

I'd be prepared to try laminating, to achieve a kind of 'glulam' curved beam:

http://img.archiexpo.com/images_ae/phot ... 355156.jpg - you'd use a lot of glue (and time/effort) though!

Another alternative might be to avoid bending at all and go for a succession of overlapping straight pieces arranged and joined around a curve, to approximate the overall shape, a bit like this (but using overlapping timber instead of nail-plates):

http://www.fforest.co.uk/fw/curvedrooft ... width=1024

or you could even try something clever like:

https://grabcad.com/library/leonardo-da ... ing-bridge

or, again using straight pieces arranged differently, with noggins cut at an angle to make the curve, something like:

https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/uploads/m ... 8d81da.JPG

with the latter idea, I could imagine making "bays" the width of a pallet and joining them to create an arbitrarily long "tunnel".

Cheers, W2S

PS as other posters have already made clear, pallet wood is not the most suitable material for building structures out of (which is usually, but not always, how it ended up as a pallet). Some pallet wood is treated, some is not - there are standardised markings which you can Google to interpret: https://www.1001pallets.com/pallet-safety/

 

[Inspector]

Normally you want clean straight grained wood that is still green (not fully dried) for steam bending. Pallet wood is usually full of knots gnarly grain with the centre pith and if shipped internationally will be heat treated to kill bugs etc. It doesn't like to be bent. So that is the reason you wouldn't have much luck using it.

You can cut it into strips, culling out the defects and glueing them over a form. A lot of work to make your own a curved glue lam beam.

You can also lay thicker pieces (1/2", 3/4" 1" ) on the flat and layer them like bricks, glueing them all together. Then cut the inside and outside to get your curve. Also a bucket load of work but of the three likely to be the most successful. Just note the wood has to be smooth and flat unless you want to spend a lot in gap filling glues like epoxy.

I assume you want to use pallets because you have a ready supply. In this case as boring as it might be I think conventional construction would be a better way to go.

Pete

 

[Bm101]

Can I ask what it's for?

 

[Rorschach]

Pallet wood seems like a cheap way to get wood for projects, until you factor in the time and difficulty in getting a good result, if it's even possible.
Do the job right, it will be cheaper in the long run.