Why is the english term coldmolded while we say steampressed?
Du hast mich! Maybe they are not actually the same process??
I think of cold-molded as literally a cold process, with no heat added; wood veneers, coated with glue, stacked between matching plates and clamped together.
It’s really term used more commonly in the marine industry. Canoes were being fashioned with a version of this process before 1800 (strips of wood laminated over a form), it was used in the fabrication of the German Albatros DIII fighter aircraft in 1917, and WWII American PT boats were fabricated in this manner; it’s still a economical process for one-off yachts. But it didn’t show up in the furniture industry until Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen introduced its use in the Museum of Modern Art’s Organic Design in Home Furnishings competition in1940
Micheal Thonet was using steam bending in his furniture as early as 1850.
I found this vid interesting. It’s the manufacturing process for the Herman Miller Eames Lounger. It looks like they are using a heat activated adhesive. When I interviewed with Robert Blaich at Herman Miller in 1973, the molding process was, as I recall, still a cold process; there were a bunch of molding forms with clamps. The CNC routing was years away and a hand router and holding fixtures were in use at that time.
