• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.73-82
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• 1995

Black locust trees(Robinia pseudo-acacia L.) are growing widely in Korea and have been used to get honey and animal feed, but they have seldom been used as manufacturing materials. This study was carried out to evaluate the possibility of using black locust as bent-wood furniture materials. Softening methods were steaming and micro-wave heating. The specimens of 15${\times}$15${\times}$350mm were all air-dried. For softening, specimens were steamed at 100$^{\circ}C$ for 7 min, or microwave heated for 35 seconds. It is known that microwave heating softens wood much faster than steaming. The bending processing conditions are showed in Table 7. The minimum solid-bending radii of black locust were 40mm for steaming and 150mm for micro-wave heating, respectively. In conclusion the steamed black locust, showed very good solid bending properties, but the bending properties of micro-wave heated black locust were not sufficient for bent-wood furniture.