Roving off can wait awhile. Click here to see some roving pics. There are other ways to bend wood. On Lake Ionnina in Northern Greece they build flat bottom canoes. The keel plank is pevko or pine - maybe 35mm thick.
Most builders favour a bit of rocker.
So the plank is rested on a fulcrum about a metre off the ground, and a fire lit underneath. Rocks are placed at the end of the plank, and in time it bends. And chars, but so what, the plank was ripped over size. Someone once told me that junk builders in China would, when bending in planks, hang brass trays at intervals down the plank. Charcoal fires were lit, and the planks slowly cramped into place.