Firewood Carrier

I saw an article about these years ago. I’ve always been interested in steam bending wood, it seemed like a challenging project to try. So many years later and attempts later and messing around with grain orientation and trying air-dried straight grain sawn Oak , and rung patterns, I finally have a system that

works. It stopped being a project and became a mission.

I buy Oak from a local mill that does sawing for boat builders that needs to be straight grain and have a high moisture content to successfully steam bend. Or if I have a suitable Oak log I will split or rive the bows from the log. Or I have milled my own on a friends sawmill. The bows are about 60″ long and you’d be surprised how hard it is to get that length without knots and very straight grain. I made a bending form that allows me to get the shape of the bow desired, there has been a lot of trial and error sweat and stress to get to this point where I can reliably bend bows without major failures.

These bows have a handle incorporated into them with a relief on each side of it to allow the wood to bend without separating on its growth ring plane or radially. The carriers get heavy. You can fit almost three arm loads in it and the handle thickness makes it much easier and comfortable to lift and carry.

I make a tenon on the end of the legs where they go into the base. That tenon goes through the base and is glued and sometimes wedged in.

The angle of the bows foot or tenon into the base and tight joinery make it impossible to pull out. So the wedge is helpful but not always necessary.

These tenons are dried in a homemade kiln, the base rails have a higher moisture content that will dry down a bit around the already dry tenon that if anything might swell a bit making a bond that when done right does not need glue.

I use an indoor/outdoor yellow glue since it will be kept by a fireplace or woodstove then taken outside or if left in a high humidity environment can be a lot of wood movement.