Back Slats Bent and in Form

As you can see, this is a far cry from my original idea of using two clamps.

The author (Kerry Pierce) of the book I am learning to build chairs from, uses a bench vise to close his forms in, that is an excellent idea, there is no wrestling, no fuss, just insert the steamed slats in the form at the bench vise, and close the vise.

I will need to purchase a bench vise with the screw longer than 10" as that is the thickness of my form with the slats in them, pre-bend. That'll have to wait though, as funding becomes available for such a tool. Eventually I'll have to have several bench vises to accommodate the construction of various chairs at once.

These slats are a quarter inch thick. The formula for steam bending wood is 1 hour per inch, thus 15 minutes should suffice for these slats, but the author steams his slats for a half hour, so I did as well. I am not that good yet that I can start steering away from sage advice from a professional post and rung chair builder like Kerry Pierce.