Throw Your Hat into the Rockler Bent Wood Challenge
Updated: Dec. 08, 2022One of our favorite woodworking and hardware stores is giving you the opportunity to win a $500 gift card simply by bending a few pieces of wood.
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Rockler Bent Wood Challenge
Rockler is opening its doors to see your creativity and skill at wood bending. They are giving away prizes of $500, $250 and $125 to the top three makers that demonstrate their art at this tough form of woodworking. There aren’t many more parameters to this challenge. Your project can be any size, feature a small amount of wood bending or a lot of it, and can include other materials such as metal and glass.
The submission process is simple. Post a photo of your project on Instagram using the hashtag #RocklerBentWoodChallenge and…. that’s it. Rockler also encourages makers to share a video of the process to YouTube. This is not required, but who knows? You could get some buzz and maybe even develop a reputation as a talented influencer. The submission deadline is October 31.
Check out the full challenge post here from Rockler.com.
What is Wood Bending?
The term “wood bending” can encompass a lot of different processes. Bent lamination, kerf bending and steam bending are a few of the different processes. For my money, the easiest process for a beginner DIYer is bent lamination which is the process of clamping thin strips of wood, glued together in layers, to a form.
Click here for a basic tutorial about bent lamination.
Steam bending is a more intricate form of wood bending that involves softening the wood lignin to hinder the wood’s tendency to spring back to its original shape. Steam bending also takes more tools. Rockler sells a great kit that will get you on the right track. Some settings will need to be dialed in but after a few trials, you will be on your way to building a ton of new projects.
