How to bend plywood

[petebell]

Does anyone know any websites to show the easiest way to bend plywood?

[KARL]

I have watched this question sitting unanswered since just after it was posted and held back replying in the hope that you would get a more knowledgeable answer than what I am about to offer. Plywood is a sandwich of wooden layers where the wood in each layer has been shaved off a log, rather like shavings produced by a standard wood plane, only wider and thicker. Each "shaving" is essentially a veneer. Veneer can be bent to a very substantial degree, especially if wet and warmed up (old style boat building using planks involves putting the planks into a tunnel filled with hot steam and then the plank is quickly bent on and fixed to the boat skeleton while it is still hot), but plywood cannot be bent much at all and then only if it is quite thin. Thicker plywood cannot be bent at all (without breaking it), this being one of the main purposes of producing plywood: a considerably faithfully flat material. At best, thin plywood can be curved just a bit, but not really bent. When you see elaborately formed shapes, such as in furniture (chairs in particular) showing the layered effect of plywood cross-section, then you are looking at something that was built up layer by layer on a "former" so that when the glue of the last layer set it was already "bent". I would therefore be surprised if any sites providing tips on bending plywood exist, but you could no doubt find advice on laminating or layering veneers. Hoping this is of some help.