Binding and Heat Treating

Pic 1: First pass through the binder. The rough beveled strips have been group in sets of 6 and run through the binding machine. Pic 2: The second pass through the binder wrapping the binding cord in the opposite direction. Pic 3: The bound strips are loaded into the oven for heat treating. Pic 4: The temperature of the oven is controlled by a PID controller (over kill). The controller will automatically stabilize the oven at the target temp and hold it to within 2 or 3 degrees. A standard oven thermostat will let the temperature swing by as much as 50 degrees one way or the other. There are ways to work around that without using a PID controller. I just get a little carried away with the tool thing. If you want to know a lot more about the heat treating process...there's an outstanding research paper on the subject available at www.bamboorodmaking.com. Go to the downloads page. It's call Bamboo in the Laboratory.