I finally lost my cherry :-)

[Kim]

Oh, here it is



Yep here it is, I have had the blanket for about 2 1/2 years and had only tested it out to make sure it got hot when you turned it on. I even made an internal bending form with the hinged external caul that you see in the image around a 18 month ago. I was so confident that all would work OK I just left it in the shed and moved on with other stuff without testing.

Well, with all the recent bending questions I decided to grab an orphaned side of curly cherry I got from BobC and give it a whirl. As you can see it when very well, the side drops straight into the mold I made around a year ago with just a 1/4" spring in from the tail and heel block area of the mold.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I know but I am getting closer and besides, I like the foreplay.

Oh, I also made a couple of bridges yesterday, both are from the same board only a few inches apart, what do ya reckon.



[/img]

Cheers all

Kim

[Serge]

Nice set up for bending sides there Kim, how does this work, do you bend at the waist first with this? Or do you let the weight of the upper part do the bending with the blanket and then clamp the ends?

Love that, i think it was Charliewood at the OLF that had built something similar, right?

Anyways, looks like it does the job very well and very nice bridges you've made mate! :hny2 :hny1

Serge

[James Mc]

The one from the sapwood looks amazing! Could almost be yellow mallee burl. Wonder how it would look against a red cedar top?

[Kim]

Thanks Surge

The bending system is a real simple set up but very affective so that is why I settled on it back in mid 2005. As far as I am aware the original idea for this system belongs to Tom Durr or Mandomaniac over at the luthierforum.com.

You make a paper/foil sandwich around the spritzed side as per standard heat blanket system and then sandwich that and the blanket between 2 sheets of .10 spring steel shim stock. Place the upper male caul on top of the sandwich, turn on the blanket, wait a couple of minutes for the steam to rise, push the waist down with your hand and hold in place, push the lower and upper down into position, turn off the blanket cause it's now getting too hot, shout out to get the kids to come hold everything in place, switch the blanket back on for 2 minutes and wait for the steam again, leave the kids holding everything in place and put a bit of pressure on them to make sure they do it right, then leave'em to hold things in place while you go have a beer for an hour, come back out with some lollies and a grin, and your done.

Cheers

Kim

[Bob Connor]

Your kids work for lollies eh? Don't want to swap do ya?

Is that an SJ shape you've bent there mate? Whatever it is it's looking good. About 4 minutes is about how long we zap ours for.

What sort of wood is that in the bridges?

Bob

[Serge]

AAAAH, Family, the joys of bending wood with daddy!!!

Pretty easy and cool, and it must not be too long to make either with a good bandsaw with a very sharp blade so you can make the shapes ya want at will you trickster you huh?

Thanks mate, have you ever thought of doing a venitian cutaway with such an apparel?

[Dennis Leahy]

Alright Kim!

Did you smoke a cigarette after, or just roll over and fall asleep?

Dennis

[Allen]

Very nice bending form Kim. More food for thought. How thin do you go on those side?

[Kim]

Thanks Folks,

James the bridges are both minnerichi that I got from Tim Spittle of Australian Tonewoods.

Bob, you picked it mate an SJ it be.

Serge, yes mate easy to make new shapes, you cut the first layer neat and pattern rout the rest then glue and screw them together. One would still need to make the build mold though. As for the cutaway, yes, not at all a problem with this system. You just make either a dedicated form or a form with an insert so you can do the base side as well on the one unit.

Dennis, had to give up the smokes buddie, kept burning holes in me pillow after sex.

Allen, that side is 0.90" and has a lot of figure, being cheery it bent very easy with the only deformity being at a knot whole near the edge where the wood peaked a little at that point, I am sure I could have gone thicker without a problem if I had wanted to.

Cheers

Kim

[Dennis Leahy]

Kim,

You may already be aware if it, but Tom (mandomaniac) Durr and/or Grant Goltz came up with a different way of bending, and Tom has now (I think) abandoned the large hinged outer mold.

The "latest" is to use just a male bending mold, and to have a bit of a tail sticking down from the butt end of the mold. The steel slat, aluminum foil, wet paper, wood sandwich is made the same way, but is then secured vertically at the butt tail. So the whole thing is sticking straight up (with a small spring clamp at the top, holding the other end of the sandwich together), and then you turn on the heat. When the wood becomes plastic, the sandwich droops over the male mold, and you clamp a caul over the lower bout, then over the waist, etc., working your way to the neck end (and a cutaway if present.)

I haven't done it yet, but they make it sound easy. I saw Grant's rig, and he had inserted a small bar of aluminum between the steel slats at one end, drilled through the steel and aluminum, and had fixed the metal together. That made the steel slats more like a taco, waiting for the aluminum foil/wet paper/wood/wet paper/aluminum foil/heating blanket inner sandwich to be inserted. The aluminum bar was the correct thickness for the entire inner sandwich, based on typical (.080" thick) sides.

I suspect Tom will still use whatever big molds he has made, but any new bending molds will be male mold only.

I'm going to keep using the mold-making technique of cutting a male mold out of the center of a female mold, until I see or figure out a better way to make both male and female molds.

Dennis
p.s. I'm very excited to see you moving forward, and will be watching your progress!

[Serge]

Thanks Kim, i think i might give that a try and go for the venitian style on my next 3 builds, you rock dude!

[Kim]

You rock to Serge, I look forward to seeing how the venetians go. I will be sticking to a standard SJ this time round, in fact, I done the side template in perspex/lexan today and bent the sides in EIR, came out real good to.

Cheers

Kim

[Hesh1956]

Well it took ya long enough M8!

Someone asked me if I smoke after sex and I said - I don't know I never looked......

Great job Kim my friend everything looks first class!

[Kim]

The one from the sapwood looks amazing! Could almost be yellow mallee burl. Wonder how it would look against a red cedar top?

Hey James,

I got a nice dark plum sinker redwood top I may use for the blond bridge, or maybe a small size paint grade top done in black...I could call it my pint size Guinness

Cheers

Kim

[James Mc]

You could use a nice englemann spruce with orange shellac and call it the pint chaser.

It wouldn’t be hard to find a chunk of crows ash teak for the fret board and it should be a good colour match. Blonde on red, I like.

[Craig]

Someone asked me if I smoke after sex and I said - I don't know I never looked...... :

.


That broke me up Hesh


Kim , that's all fantastic work mate. The blonde bridge ROCKS ! . I like it a WHOLE lot.

Cheers, Craig