It's Fall & We Can't Bring Spring Back Yet, But Our Engineering Team Can Calculate for It!

Music Center at Indian Hill Groton, MA 

                                                       photo courtesy of Tom Hargeones
One of the technical hurdles in producing curved shapes is Springback. Creating stable,curved shapes with glulam does NOT involve the application of heat, moisture or steam. It is relatively easy to bend twenty 1"x6" boards(each one could be bent by hand)to a form, but very difficult to bend a solid 5"x13" beam. There is an exponential increase in stiffness as the number of piles increases.

The force required to bend the individual piles is still present within each board, and as the cured shape is released from the forms they will try to straighten.  The amount that the individual boards can force the assembly to straighten is referred to as springback.  The more piles, the less it will springback. The more piles, the less it will springback. It is possible to calculate the expected springback, but it is not an exact science, and wood is naturally variable.

More Glulam from Unalam next week!