CALLING ALL EXPERTS! I'M IN DEEP TROUBLE HERE!

I'm building an Outer Island. I'm trying to lay the strips that go by the side of the cockpit and from the front deck to the low rear deck. My strips are air dried WRC cove and bead 11/16" wide and .275" thick ala the One Ocean concept.

The problem is that I can't get the strips to take the bend from the front to rear deck. Over 75% of my tries have fractured, regardless of the method used.

These strips are too stiff to make the bends cold without introducing a lot of residual stress in the deck so I've concentrated on methods employing moisture and steam.

I've tried:

1. The wet rag hot iron method.
2. Dry heat using a heat gun.
3. Moist wood and heat gun.
4. Steam box.

The steam box method would seem at first glance to offer the best success rate but has not proven to be any better than the other methods.

Here is the steam box method I used:

First note that the area to be bent is in the CENTER of a strip, not at the end. I used a 1" PVC tube 3' long with a tee in the middle to which is attached a pressure cooker. The strip rests on a couple of bolts and it's well in the upper half of the tube. The Steam Bending Wood FAQ in rec.woodworking by Jim Roche says that there must be a free flow of steam over the wood and out the box. I provided for that by stuffing each end of the tube with a rag that let the steam escape over the top surface of the strip.

Sometimes I soaked the strip for as much as an hour before steaming, sometimes not. (I haven't tried soaking overnight, but some scrap pieces soaked in a bowl for 24 hours felt just as stiff as dry ones.) Steam times varried between 15 and 30 minutes. When the strip was removed it was wet and steamy. I then clamped it into position on my forms within a minute. 3 out of 4 strips fractured.

It is probably possible to bend the strip by hand when directly taken from the steamer. I tried some scraps and some fractured and some didn't. The problem is that it's not a repeatable method from strip to strip because the bends are never in the same places, the bend tends not bend smoothly and wants to kink and therefore reasonable fairing between strips would be questionable.

If ANYONE has any ideas how I can solve this problem I REALLY need to hear it. I'm beginning to think trash can!

Thanks,

Ken Blanton