I picked up a nearly finished ceder strip canoe this summer. It was glassed, varnished and trimed out in mahogany. But the boat was built to have outer stems, and there are none. The bow and stern have wide blunt ends (1"?). The stems are sharp curved, 4 - 5 inch raduis. I do not have the forms that this boat was created on.

So my question is does anyone have a good idea about how to stem bend new stems directly onto the boat and clamp it down while they set up. I have also thought about transfering the lines (some how) to make a jig. I would like to bend mahogany, so the trim will a match (very tight radius for mahogany).

Any good ideas out there?

PS: I have steam bent stems for two other SB boats that I have made. But I have always made the inner and outer stems at the same time.

> 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.