Old inner tubes make useful clamps

[Nick Payne]

As a keen cycling family with over a dozen bikes in the garage, we have dozens of old punctured inner tubes lying around, and while casting around for what I could use to clamp some veneers in place while laminating them against the guitar body for an armrest, I thought of the inner tubes. They worked out extremely well. The image below shows three plies of 1mm Silky Oak veneer being clamped by the inner tubes. The tubes as supplied were slightly too long to give enough tension, so I just shortened them by tying a knot in them - visible at upper left.

Also interesting how the polyurethane glue has foamed right through the veneer in several places.

[woodrat]

Nice work Nick.....perhaps you could do a little Arm rest tute for us and show us how its done? Some pics of the finished arm rest would be good too....

John

[56nortondomy]

Good idea John. Nick I'd be interested to know how to make the armrests too, i have 2 to make for some upcoming guitars. Some good advice would be real handy ( like John said lots of pics. )
Thanks Wayne

[68matts]

If you've got time I'd like to see a tute on this too Nick.

[Nick Payne]

I'll take photos as I go and put something together - will probably take a couple of weeks in between other things.

[56nortondomy]

Thanks Nick that'll be great, looking forward to it.
Wayne

[Nick Payne]

I put up an overview of constructing the armrest in the Tutorials forum: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4495