Bending
There are several ways to bend wood.
First of all, I don’t reccomend kerfing, the process of making multiple cuts in order to effectively make the wood thinner. The wood will bend only where you have made the cuts, rather than bend evenly. Where possible it is better to simply use a thinner piece of wood. There is no strength lost in doing this, since the kerfed wood has itself been weakened.
Bent laminations - This is self explanitory. Multiple thin layers are laminated, glued, and bent to form the desired shape. Remember that there will be “spring back” so you may have to judge how much to over-bend the wood in order to get the desired result. You can often get the desired result with a combinaion of bent laminations and steam bending (see below)
Steam bending - This is a very versitle technique, but requires experience (and some caution). For wood to achieve maximum flexability it must be saturated with water vapor (steam) and be hot. Merely submerging the wood in water is a far inferior technique. Entire books have been written on this subjest, and to do this effectively you will need to do some reading and some practicing.