simontheintrepid
New member
Hi all, I’m not an experienced crafter at all but in an effort to tidy up my garage, came up with a design for a bicycle rack that I wanted to make out of ply laminate and have a few questions about how to go about it. I’ve uploaded my sketch below but it is essentially just an oblong with four 90° corners and cutouts on the sides to put the bike top tube into. I also know that I could make this very easily with right-angled corners as opposed to curves, but I was interested in the technique and wanted to make something more aesthetically attractive.
1. First of all is this sensible? The plan is to use 7 x 3mm thick ply and the corners have an inner radius of 29mm.
2. Do I need to buy a plywood specifically marketed as flexible, or does it just have to be thin enough? If so, do you know a good place to buy from (I’m based in Kent)?
3. Can this sort of thing be moulded in stages (i.e. could I make a mould that covers 1 or 2 corners and duplicate the process) or will this get pointlessly difficult with having to glue the thing in stages?
I also know there will need to be at least one join somewhere, but haven’t decided how best to go about it. Anyway, any advice is gratefully received.
So I was going to post images here but for some reason I do not have permission to post images or links, so basically it's an oblong with curved edges (outside radius 50mm), full dimensions are 250mm tall, 350mm wide, about 250mm deep.
1. First of all is this sensible? The plan is to use 7 x 3mm thick ply and the corners have an inner radius of 29mm.
2. Do I need to buy a plywood specifically marketed as flexible, or does it just have to be thin enough? If so, do you know a good place to buy from (I’m based in Kent)?
3. Can this sort of thing be moulded in stages (i.e. could I make a mould that covers 1 or 2 corners and duplicate the process) or will this get pointlessly difficult with having to glue the thing in stages?
I also know there will need to be at least one join somewhere, but haven’t decided how best to go about it. Anyway, any advice is gratefully received.
So I was going to post images here but for some reason I do not have permission to post images or links, so basically it's an oblong with curved edges (outside radius 50mm), full dimensions are 250mm tall, 350mm wide, about 250mm deep.
