: Merry Christmas everyone..... I wonder if you builders of the
: expodition Gilly are able to get your wrc beed and cove strips
: to bend to the forms without using cheater strips. I have been
: using a heat gun but still having a lot of trouble. My strips
: are 1/4 inch. I am wondering if I need to use steam and am not
: sure of the best way to get it. I am resisting cheater strip
: because it looks like it would be difficult to use with the beed
: and cove strips. Any thoughts? Joe

Merry Christmas Joe!. WRC does not steam particularly well from what I have read.

Planning the stripping pattern is the best way to ensure a relatively easy build. The first strip determines where the others are going to go, but it's not always easy to anticipate what will happen down the road. Even after you are started, there are a number of ways around the problem.

The purpose of cheater strips is to reduce the amount of bending across the width of the strip. That is the stiffest bending direction, although the hardest bends are the ones that are partly across the width and partly across the thickness because the strips want to twist, and it can be difficult to get enough leverage to control that.

The force required to bend a strip is directly proportional to the thickness and proportional to the cube of the width; so the thickness isn't the most important dimension. The force required for a twist if proportional to the square of the cross-sectional area and that really multiplies up in a hurry as strip dimensions are increased. So be careful if you use cheaters that you are not creating more twist along the new path of the strips.

Reducing the strip width can make a great difference and eliminate the need for cheaters, but some do not like the appearance of different widths of strips. Changing the wood type from WRC which can be stiff especially if very dry, to something easier to bend like some pine species, is also helpful. I used both these tricks to avoid cheaters.