Straight from Bill's steambox

"Odourless, invisible gas consisting of vaporised water, usually interspersed with minute droplets of water giving it a cloudy appearance".
Encyclopaedia Brittanica.
Our editor was watching me whittling in the workshop one day with the steam box issuing a gentle flow of the above-described gas and thought it would be a good subject for a column, and I agree.
Steam powered the industrial revolution that transformed the world for better or worse, and is still used to generate power worldwide.
Steam cranes and shovels excavated stone for the construction of the harbour, and steam trains hauled it.
And steam power in the form of the magnificient restored locomotive that the Oamaru Steam and Rail Society runs every Sunday down to the Red Sheds helps highlight the historic value of Oamaru and its harbour.
But long before it became the industrial workhorse, steam was used for centuries by woodworkers and boat builders to bend wood.
I use it to bend the willow handles and rims of my trug baskets and to bend my ash pitchforks into shape.
Wood cells are made of cellulose and this is nature's plastic.
Like oil-based plastics, it is pliable when heated.
(In the nineteenth century the first plastics were derived from plant cellulose and also from milk casein.)
To bend wood you need nothing more than a wooden box, big enough to fit the object to be heated, sitting on a pot of boiling water on a stove, which is what I have in my little workshop.
I insert the wooden handles and rims into the steam and within half an hour or so they are ready to emerge and be bent into wooden bending jigs.
Admittedly, wood is wood and not plastic so it is less predictable.
Trees grow layer by layer and in different conditions.
They have knots and grain and all this means that one can get breakages and that it takes a while to learn the characteristics of different woods, which can involve tears of frustration.
Because it grows in layers the cutting of wood inevitably involves cutting across layers and where this happens is where the lifting of wood fibres can occur, leaving a split.
Backing strips to hold the wood while bending can prevent this.
So, wood bending is simple, but complicated!
It is also fun and satisfying and potentially useful for coracle making, as John Baster can testify.
- Contributed by Bill Blair