I didn't have any experience with steam bending either until I needed to bend the inner and outer stems form my Wee Lassie canoe. They are laminated out of 1/8 in. pieces of wood (in this case pine). I tried bending them dry and the wood broke so I rigged up a simple steamer. I used an old rice cooker as a steam generator, put a piece of 3/4 in. plywood over the top to hold the steam in. The ply had a 2 in. hole in the center. I got a 4 ft. length of drain pipe and cut a 2 in. hole in that. After aligning the two holes I built a wood bracket to hold the pipe in place. I plugged the holes with rags and also the ends of the pipe.

I added about a quart of water and fired it up. When the steam was flowing steadily I put my wood inside for about 15 minutes. When it came out I bent it around my forms and clamped it in place to dry.

The thin wall drain pipe softens when heated. I've used mine about 6 times now and it sags pretty good. As the steam box comes up to temperature you can actual see the pipe start to deform. Luckily the pipe is cheap.

Ted Moores has some more information on steaming in both CanoeCraft and KayakCraft as does Wolfgang Brink in The Aleutian Kayak. For the wood we're likely to bend for kayak building lo-tech steaming works very well.