Making the steamer was surprisingly easy. I found another useful article here and decided to follow the same approach. I already had an electric wallpaper stripper, a length of 4" PVC soil pipe and a removable pipe plug. All I needed was a fixed end cap to solvent-weld to the other end and a suitable connector which I could solvent-weld to a hole in the side of the soil pipe. As it turned out, this connector was the most difficult to obtain as the hose on the wallpaper stripper has non-standard fittings (of course!), but a nearby pond and aquarium specialist helped me out.
After that, it was just a matter of experimenting with steam time. Most articles on steaming suggest around 1 hour per inch of wood thickness, but this clearly varies according to wood type and other factors. I found that I got the best results with about 30 minutes of steaming.
The steamer worked well. The pipe was inclined to distort if not fully supported, but this was not a significant issue.
But I then hit the next problem. The stripwood would bend around the semi-circular form, but after being left to cool and dry out was inclined to spring back - even after being left for 24 hours. It was clear that the ends in particular would not keep to the curved shape just with glue. Time to think again.
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