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After some lateral thinking, I realised that the bentwood ring did not have to be able to hold together independently, but could be fixed inside a frame - provided that the latter was not visible when the wall cladding was in place. Not only did this help keep the stripwood bent to the required shape, but it was also possible to nail through all but the final layer into the frame, thereby helping keep the layers glued together.
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The four layers were built up gradually in sections, with the sections staggered between layers. Since the stripwood came in 2.4 metre lengths, I decided to make the first three layers in 3 sections each, with the final layer in two sections. Each section needed at least 24 hours clamped for the glue to fully harden - and in cold weather this was even longer, so it was a lengthy, fiddly and messy process.
There was still a tendency for the ends of each section not to follow the curve exactly, but this got better as the layers built up and could be corrected with a few small screws and exterior grade wood filler.
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