Steam-bending a new toe rail

Greg Manning shows you how to laminate and steam a plank so that it can be to be bent across its width

- Greg Manning

When my colleague Roy and I bought a Fairey Atalanta A142, it was cosmetically in very good condition, but under the shine were some serious defects.

Perhaps the most obvious were the toe rails. These were made of 2in x ¾in hardwood strips mounted on ¾in bobbins, or bearers, where the rail was fixed to the deck.

The rails had suffered from impact damage and rot, especially where the pulpit and pushpit had been added on top of them.

We wished to keep the boat as original as possible so wanted to replace the toe rails with new wooden ones.

The challenge was how to bend the rails, as the bend needed to be across the width of the wood rather than its thickness. As well as that, they also had to twist to follow the contours of the boat.

The technique we used could be used for many projects: making a coaming top or gunwale capping, for example.

We started by searching the internet to find out if air- or kiln-dried wood would be best. The answer was inconclusive so we bought a large plank of air-dried local oak from a saw mill and started by sawing and dressing it to size.

Even though we’d never steamed a piece of wood before, we could see that using the methods available to us, bending it across its width was probably going to be impossible. It was something that could be done in a pressurised steam chest – but not in our shed.