The following information, originally from Bill Clayden, is taken from the Guillemot Kayak Building forum, where it was contributed by Dave Greenway in 1998.

I discovered that for many situations, a delightfully simple solution followed from the application of beam-bending theory.

A number of plies of similar wood (n) are glued and clamped to a curved form, which is shaped to give the lamination a deflection of "x." When the clamps are removed, the lamination springs away from the form by an amount "y." Exactly how much springback can be predicted with the formula:

The ratio of springback to the original deflection depends only on the number of laminations. The ratio does not depend on the properties or thickness of the wood or the geometry of the curved form. Thus, for two plies, the springback is one-quarter of the initial deflection, or one-ninth for three plies and one-sixteenth for four plies.

--Bill Clayden, Isle of Wight, England

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-Mike Scarborough