Reinforcing Cutaway Bend

[Dave M]

I am still having difficulty with cutaway bends. On the current one I got a reasonable bend but there were some flats between the ripples of some very nice maple. I decided that since I had already made the side pretty thin ~ 1.7 mm that if I was going to sand the two sharp bends to a smooth curve there would be little wood left so I reinforced with a couple of layers of veneer - oak as it happened to be what I had around.

I wondered what other people had done in this situation?

[Mark McLean]

That looks like an elegant solution Dave - just be careful not to sand through the maple trying to get the "perfect" surface on the outside. That is a very pretty looking set of sides by the way.

[rocket]

Looks very nice Dave, ditto what Mark said. I usually do my cutaways on a similar fashion I laminate the entire sides set with an inner layer of 1.5mm and an outer of 1.75mm and that gives me a bit to play with when tidying up the sides, I find this method gives the sides a bit more stiffness.

Cheers

Rod.

[johnparchem]

Dave, I did the samething on one of mine.

[Dave M]

Rod I was thinking about this as I made up cauls for the glueing. I decided that glueing the whole side as laminates would be quite hard. Unless perhaps you use a vacuum press...? Given my difficulties with the sharp cutaway design that I like (based on Trevor's shape) I am still keen to look for other ways to achieve it.

[Dave M]

Oh and by the way that is really neat looking binding/purfling on the mandolin.