A little hard to see but here is the bow section of the plans "lofted" onto a piece of poster board. (I had to tape a small piece in the lower left corner to get the whole thing to fit.)
I forgot to take pictures, but I laid the poster board on a piece of 3/4" plywood and drove a finish nail at each station point. The station lines are the vertical lines in the drawing, 6" apart. I then used a thin piece of wood as a "spline" and bent it around the nails to guide my pencil. I cut out the curve on the plywood and drilled holes for the clamps.
The steam generator is busy pumping steam into the steamer box.
This is just a meat thermometer. The temp is exactly 212 degrees.
Looks like I should have used thicker wood! This is only 1/2" lumber. The temp dropped to about 208, then I put some duct tape over the split and got it back up to around 210 for the last few minutes of steaming.
I was concerned about that or at least that the pipe would sag, so I ran a test today. First, I put a groove for the pipe to sit in, in a 3' board to prevent sagging and to keep the pipe from rolling. There is a block under the front end of the board so water will run out the drain hole in the back of the pipe. I hooked up the steamer and ran it for over an hour after it reached 212 degrees with no ill effects. The pipe was still quite rigid so I don't think it would have sagged. I'll write all this up more thoroughly in the next post.
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