this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
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Woodworking

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Was just watching an appeals court video and the desks for the defense and prosecutors were very curved

How is wood made to curve like that while keeping it level/flat?

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[–] mushroommunk@lemmy.today 11 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

There's four main ways usually, steam bending, kerf cutting, carving, and faking it.

With steam bending you get a bunch of thin pieces of wood, steam them, and then put them in a mold. They dry and hold the shape of the mold. They're glued together to be a strong curved plywood basically. If I had to guess without seeing it. This was the method used.

With kerf cutting you cut a bunch of parallel lines across the back of the area you want to bend. Just the thickness of your saw blade. The front of the wood is left thick enough to hide the cuts, but thin enough that, often with some steam, you can get the wood to bend closing the gaps cut in the back.

The third way, carving, means you start with a large piece of wood and just cut a curved section out. This is the least common approach as it's hard, wasteful, grain doesn't always run in a strong direction, and often impractical to find wood large enough.

Finally, faking it. Usually gluing veneer (a very thin sheet of wood) over something. Think laminate countertops, but the reverse. More and more it's by just printing on a wood pattern scanned from actual wood or something.

[–] sopularity_fax@sopuli.xyz 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Can multiple pieces of wood be combined into one cogesive+seamless piece?

[–] Marafon@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 hours ago

Glue the wood into a big rectangle and then cut some off (in the shape of your curve)

[–] merde@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 hours ago

Steam bending Ash in the woodworking workshop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkJOY_N7OKE