• Introduction
• Kerf Bending
• Treasure Chest

Introduction

The goal of this tutorial is to give an intro what Kerf Bending is and then show how it can be used to create a laser cut treasure chest. This is going to be more of a free form tutorial as the purpose of this is for you to get inspired into Kerf Bending and see how it practically can be used.

Kerf Bending

Kerf Bending is the act of cutting into wood so that the material can bend in the space that was cut out. There are many patterns of Kerf Bending. Below are some examples. There is not a correct one that is best for Kerf Bending, and a rabbit hole that would be fun to explore is creating new Kerf Bending designs, especially ones that are connected with the laser cut project you’re using it for. I got my designs and also a majority of my knowledge about Kerf Bending from this article: https://www.instructables.com/Curved-laser-bent-wood/ by Aaron Porterfield, highly recommend reading this before continuing on a Kerf Bending project as there is a wealth on information here. Included in this article is this file with many different Kerf Bending designs [file below, all credit to Aaron Porterfield]. In the file, there are nine different Kerf Bending patterns each with their own benefits. However, Porterfield said that the cross lattice was the most flexible, so for all of my Kerf Bending designs I used the cross lattice. If you want to see a lot more Kerf Bending patterns check out this article by Rain Noe which explores using video game characters as patterns: https://www.core77.com/posts/36481/Adventures-in-Laser-Kerf-Bending.

Something to keep in mind when Kerf Bending is the thickness of the wood. I cut the exact same file on two different pieces of wood which were both sold as 0.125”. One bended all the way, but one broke because it could not bend as much as I wanted it to. I measured the wood and realized that the the one that bended all the way was 0.13” thick and the one that broke was 0.15” thick. That 0.02” made the laser not cut as much through which created less space for the wood to bend. I then increased the power when cutting for the 0.15” piece of wood and then it worked perfectly.

What first inspired me to work with Kerf Bending was from a laser cut tulip design where the petals are curved. This design is from etsy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1633497373/3d-laser-cut-tulip-flower-gift-for

zip file for the flower:

Treasure Chest

I thought a very fun project would be to make a treasure chest where the lid is rounded through Kerf Bending. I started with this file of a hinged laser cut box:

I then put tabs on either side of each corner of the lid so that I