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Tonight I was sitting at the table admiring my handy work....my Granadillo sides sitting in the mold. I ran my hand across them....and I could feel ridges from the bending process. They are not smooth.

I bent them on the bending iron from Stewmac....I know that this stuff is not going to magically disappear...what to do?

FYI...the tail block is already installed

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There is no difference between the man that thinks he can....and the man that thinks he cannot.

If you mean you have ripples along the width of the sides. sometimes that can be sanded out if you are carefull. But I think you mean that you have noticed that instead of a smooth curve, you have a series of realtively straight bends. and where one stops and the other starts you feel a "ridge". That is the bugaboo of hand bending and why it takes lots of practice, and also why many of us use fancy bending machines. It may not be as bad as you think and with some judicious sanding the result will probably be acceptable, although not perfect. It is pretty hard , if not impossible to reverse the situation as the heat of the iron has locked the wood fibers in place. Maybe someone else has a trick. Good luck!!!

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It's not the miles ahead, it's the stone in your shoe


In Markham,Virginia

Snig buddy one of the things that you will want to do prior to routing the binding channels and after the back and top are attached is true up your sides.

I use a flat sanding block that is longer then the depth of the guitar and in the waist area I use a round sanding stick. Truing up the sides will remove minor ridges and smooth everything out.

For those of who use Fox style benders we still, on occasion, will get a slight ridge on the side and the truing process sands these nice and smooth.

Now if your ridges are substantial there will be the issue of if your sides are thick enough to sand the ridge out without making the sides to thin. In this case it's really more then a ridge and perhaps more accurately described as a fold......

A trick that my pal Joe White taught me is to place a piece of paper towel between the side and my fingers and mover it around feeling the sides. This makes it easier to feel imperfections, dips, ridges, etc.

well right now the sides are at .090 thousandths.....tail block in....

I think I'll take it out of the mold tomorrow and see if I can steam some of them out..the sanding had occurred to me but I was concerned about the thickness. In some of these areas I could very well knock off another 15 thousandths without even knowing it...and I suspect that would compromise the integrity of the sides...and thereby the integrity of the box.

Would you believe my practice piece was much smoother?....

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There is no difference between the man that thinks he can....and the man that thinks he cannot.

If your sides are .90" and provided these facets are not so bad that you can see them you can sand them out without any worry of making your sides too thin.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Brock is correct. The slight ridges and imperfections can be taken out with a combination of scrapers and sand paper without risk of going to thin. Hey, don't I know you?

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Kevin Kneeburg

Kevin?....you made it!!!!!!

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There is no difference between the man that thinks he can....and the man that thinks he cannot.