Scotia beading around corners

[Chriswills]

Wondering if anyone can help

me. I’ve laid down lam flooring and now want to bead it but in the passage way I have a curved skirting board as the attached pic. I’ve tried adding cuts to the rear of it and it keeps breaking. Any ideas welcome. 

[Chriswills]

Here the beading type I want to use

[joe90]

Yes being MDF it’s prone to breaking , try this      

 

Edited June 8 by joe90

[Chriswills]

Cheers. That’s worth a try. Let you know how it goes

[Redbeard]

...and steam it? Make a home-made steam-box 'fuelled' by a wallpaper steamer. We could also start a thread re the 'scariest wood steamer I've seen'...

[Chriswills]

Didn’t work. The bend is at the wrong angle and not flat if that makes sense

[Chriswills]

Can you cut them at angles and join them up?

[MPH243]

You could try solid oak Scotia mold and make a template of the radius and try to steam it and bend.

Or cut them at angles as @Chriswills suggested and join but use the real wood as the wood coloured paper will probably come off the mdf ones. 

[Alan Ambrose]

Steaming works well with softwood, not sure how well it’ll go with hardwood. I used to help my dad build wooden boats when I was a teenager. Amazing what you can do with a former, some tensioning device (e.g. string), a standard kettle and a bit of patience. I seem to remember we did it in stages i.e. steam and tension, leave to cool, repeat until you get what you want. If that little moulding is softwood, it shouldn’t be a problem. Oak may work but it’s a bit brittle. Use softwood for that bit and then stain? Otherwise (depending how much you want this) you could router the shape out of a bit of solid plank. A local carpenter could do it for you if you want.

[joe90]

Lots of scotia is MDF which will turn to pulp if steamed.

[garrymartin]

10 minutes ago, joe90 said:

Lots of scotia is MDF which will turn to pulp if steamed.

Joe is spot on. When you steam solid wood, you're trying to affect the fibres of the wood and how they interact with each other. MDF is essentially wood dust bound together with glue under incredibly high pressure - steaming it will not work in the same way that it would for solid wood. It's not impossible, but you need dry steam and a high degree of control of the temperature.

 

It very much depends on the quality and size of the scotia, and whether it has a "plastic" finish to it or it is a wood veneer, but one thing you might want to try is heating it with a heat gun as you are bending it. Adding heat can make MDF a little more pliable and allow the glue bonding to effectively separate and reform. You might just get away with it...