Building Curved Laminated Timber Beams

**Ozartisan** · 18th February 2005, 07:34 PM

Am in the process of designing what will be our escape from Sydney back to the lovely Mid North Coast of NSW.
I want to incorporate some curved timber beams.
Has anyone here ever attempted to make them?
Any suggestions as to suitable timber types etc?
Will probably need to span about 5 metres (holding up metal roof) with a gentle curve, then connect to a semi circle with radius of around 1.2m.
Have seen similar done in Tassie - am interested in anyone who has experienced the making of similar stuff.
My logic says prepare suitable timber in thicknesser, steam in pipe steamer & clamp to pegs fixed to flat floor in layers of say 3. Allow to dry then glue & re clamp. Repeat process till desired size beam is achieved.
Any suggestions, pics etc gratefully received!

Happyinsydney (for the moment!)

Originally posted in Boatbuilding thread - sorry
Guess a house is a ship floating on land!!

**Forest Gump** · 18th February 2005, 10:19 PM

I would use ply to laminate the beams. As a stairmaker we would laminate curved strings with ply and put a veneer over the top to give it that solid timber affect. What type of glue to use, I am not sure. We just used good quality pva for the strings.

Daniel

**bitingmidge** · 18th February 2005, 10:31 PM

Yep... not particularly happy in Sydney!!

It's not hard to do what you are planning:

Don't muck around with the steaming, for the longer lengths and gentle curve use laminations along the lines of the commercial beams (30mm ish?) For the sharp curve at the end use laminations EXACTLY half or one third of the larger ones, the largest that you can get to bend without steaming.

Build a form the length and shape of the whole beam, you won't have to worry too much about getting a million clamps, you will be able to nail and/or screw each lamination from the top as it goes on. I'd screw them all to the form, then do a nice small "clamped" one on the bottom after all is finished to tidy it up.

At the ends, stagger the join say 600mm so that you have a Brick bond effect where the two laminates join. Every second lamination will be three bits... I am not sure if that's understandable..if you don't get it, let me know and I'll draw it!

Use Epoxy.

Get an engineer!

Cheers,

P

**Ozartisan** · 19th February 2005, 06:48 PM

Thanks guys.
You make it sound achievable.
Project is a couple of years off, but designs happening now.
Will keep you all posted

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