I bent lots of wood when building my house. I also bent lots of PVC brickmold.
This all started years ago when I lived in L.A. and realized I’d never be able to buy a nice house in the area where I lived. So I thought, “Well what CAN I do?”
I realized I could build some windows and at least I could put all that desire and energy into something tangible, and build my own house at a later date.
Here is one of the smallest windows. I built 20 windows--11 were arch-tops--all from clear Doug Fir. The screen frame is a cold-bent, lamination (I used the window frame as a form) but the window and frame are not. All glue joints were done with 100% waterproof structural glue.
Here’s the front. The square things are pegs.
Here you can see another size of window I built, and the yellow pine spacer I needed to make to fit between the window frame and the brickmold.
The Y.P. spacer is cold laminated while the brickmold—PVC—I bent by heating it till it was pliable as wet spaghetti and fitting it to a form.
That’s Stripey my helper who is a steely-eyed mouse-assassin in his own right.
Each lamination is about 1/8th inch thick, the piece is 3/4" thick. I cut all the laminations on my ’65 Unisaw and then ran them through my Rockwell planer. Each size of window required two different bending forms--one for the Y.P. spacer and one for the brickmold. I made 3 different sizes, so had to make 6 bending forms.
Here’s how I bent the PVC brickmold after heating it over a hotplate and using a heat gun.
I also made a round window for the bathroom, and needed a piece of round brickmold for it. Once heated limp, I had about 8 seconds to get it position before it started to harden.
Here are some views of the house with windows installed:
