Bendable hardwoods in the automotive industry may not at first seem like a market fit, but we are talking about heritage restorations and new materials for prototyping and experimental applications. Auto Futurist in "The New Century of Car Builders", has written about the use of Cold-Bend™ hardwood in the custom shaping of automotive components. Cold-Bend™ hardwood has been used for heritage and contemporary steering wheels (in airplanes too), curved trim, frames, spring components and sculptural prototyping. Cold-Bend™ hardwood can also be vacu-formed onto curved surfaces such as dash and trim components. Another development for the automotive market is a flexible wood woven matt that can be cold molded onto the surface of exterior panels, and glassed over with clear-coat epoxy. A similar project was developed for the Splinter super car, a stunning project, but this method was limited to gentle curves. Cold-Bend™ hardwood can be molded into more extreme, 3 dimensional curved shapes.
