Before the c-bout ribs can be bent, the corner blocks must be trimmed to the proper shape, which is determined by placing the Formica c-bout template over the blocks using the guide pins and scribing the line of the curve onto the blocks, which are then trimmed to this line. Note that the blocks are still oversized as to the upper and lower bouts, which will be marked and trimmed later.
The rib stock is then bent to fit into the blocks by lightly wetting the wood and bending it around a hot iron.
One trick that I have used to bend the c-bout ribs – a process that pushes a 1mm thick piece of figured wood to its physical limits and easily leads to breaking or cracking – is to wear a Kevlar oven glove when bending so that I can use my hand to support the entire length of the rib along the curves of the iron. This helps avoid cracking or breaking the ribs.
Here are two pictures of the bent c-bout ribs:
Before gluing the ribs to the blocks, I rubbed some paraffin wax onto the form near the blocks to avoid having the ribs glued to the form as a result of any excess glue:
The c-bout ribs are then glued to the blocks using hot hide glue and clamped with a counter block:
The counterblock puts all of the clamping pressure on the end of the ribs, and the pressure to various parts of the rib (to close any gaps that may appear between the rib and the block) can be altered by adjusting the placement of the counterblock, the length of the rib itself, or the position of the clamp on the block. In addition, after the glue has dried, small gaps can be corrected by placing the glued rib onto a hot bending iron, thus re-heating the glue and allowing some adjustment.
Here are the installed c-bout ribs:
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