6) Steam Bending the Stems

I was a bit worried about this part, everything I read said it was no problem, but I was not sure if it would really be this simple. For the stems (the front and back edge of the canoe) I needed to wrap 1.5 inches of wood around a fairly tight radius. The stems are composed of two parts, the inner and outer stem. The inner stem is made up of 3 strips of white cedar while the outer stem is 3 strips of cherry.

In order to bend the strips I had to steam them for approx. 15 min., then I had about 45 seconds to bend them around the stem mold before they cooled off too much. Keeping with the bootleg theme, I used a borrowed laboratory hotplate (with permission), my tea kettle, a PVC pipe, and some rags to stuff the ends.

Much to my suprise, everything worked beautifully and the stems practically bent themselves around the forms. My friend Matt manned the clamps while I held the wood. If you are going to build your own stripper one day, my advice is to keep it simple, don't fall into the trap of overengineering things if you don't have too.