Official Luthiers Forum!

My Story:  
    I've seen a post once or twice and a few admissions that builders have mixed up the sides when bending them (making the same bend twice). Thinking I was careful and that I couldn't do such a thing... I did. But that is not why I am here with my head down. Instead of re-bending, I just sanded the profile off of one side (my initial cut had plenty of extra) and was planning to reintroduce it on the opposite side. I thought this was pretty smart - not re-bending right. Wrong. I just realized that two side don't mirror each other. Imagine the figure should look like \\\/// where the sides meet, now it looks like this //////.  So I still need to rebend. They aren't highly figured or anything but there are a couple of dark lines that aren't going to line up.

Problems with re-bending:
    1. These side kicked my butt and I doubt I will ever use a hot-pipe again except for touch up. I even had a small bit of superficial splitting at the waist. (Not so much splitting as lifting where the "figure" lines go diagonally - make sense?)
    2. I would have to sand off the profile on the other side which would now leave the depth of the sides 1/8th inch less than the OLF OM plans state.
    3. I already trimmed the excess off of both ends of each side. Looks good in the mold now .

Question of the day:
    Lets vote on who thinks I should re-bend, and who thinks I can leave it and chock it up to  many lessons learned and a reminder every time I look at it. 

Thanks for your help in advance! Let me know if I wasn't clear or you need pictures.

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Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils - Louis Hector Berlioz

Chansen / C hansen / C. Hansen / Christian Hansen - not a handle.

Christian

I did the same thing once--I built it anyway-=-nobody ever noticed and I play the mess out of it. Its my excuse for a deck guitar!

If you've already trimmed the sides to exact length, it's going to be a tricky job to re-bend a side.It can be done, though.
It sounds like you didn't have too much fun bending the sides on the iron in the first place, so it probably makes more sense to just leave the sides 'mismatched' and carry on.
Only you can judge this, since it depends on the color of your sides- some are so regular that it doesn't make much difference.
I did something like this once, and now I 'over-label' the sides before I bend them - marking ends, inside, outside, etc...

Cheers

John

Christian, I'd go for rebending it just for the experience. As long as the length is okay, just trim the sides and make a thin body acoustic/electric. I believe Michael P made one a while back and could probably give you some good tips and suggestions.

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Don Atwood
Arlington, VA

Christian,

I would probably rebend. I think that it is an important step in building guitars to have bent sides on a hot pipe at some point. I also am sure that the majority have made the same mistake at least once . It is all part of the learning process. Once Jose Romanillos told me that the difference between a builder and a master builder is not in whether you make a mistake or not, it is in how well you fix your mistake.

A couple things...

If the grain is not highly figured one of the ways to hide mistakes is to de-emphasize it. One way to do that if you plan on keeping the grain going ///// instead of rebending to get ////\\\\ is to make the end graft wider, especially if you are using a side purfling and having it continue down the endgraft. That way the focus is on the purfling and end graft and not on the grain of the wood.

Reducing the height of the sides by less than 1/4" is usually not a problem...when it is just 1/8" it will not be noticed.

I build classicals and if I make a mistake on an edge, the classical becomes a Flamenco .

Thanks for the suggestions everyone!!!

Ahhh!! I keep going back and forth with this. 

I want to fix it - but I truly dread making it worse if I can't pull off the flattening and rebending.

I'm going out to the garage now.... I'll keep you all posted.

_________________
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils - Louis Hector Berlioz

Chansen / C hansen / C. Hansen / Christian Hansen - not a handle.

Christian

Here's mine. I've decided that I'm not going to mind. This Terz guit will stay in the family, at least for a generation, I hope. It bothers me less and less as time goes on.

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now known around here as Pat Foster
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

I'm guilty as charged!

I re-bent after flattening it out with a clothes iron first.

1/8" could be made up by gluing your linings 1/8" higher. You'd only be routing it off for bindings anyway.

When I did mine, I figured I'd be pee'd off everytime I looked at the guitar if I didn't fix it. I'm with Hesh, do what you think you can live with.

Well I am in the process of making the correction.
I have ironed out the side and have clamped it down for now. I will start re-bending in a couple of hours.

Pat- that is a great looking guitar from what I can see! I can hardly tell anything is out of the ordinary.

I made up my mind to leave it be, but then I wetted it with naptha and it was pretty noticable. Wish me luck!!

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Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils - Louis Hector Berlioz

Chansen / C hansen / C. Hansen / Christian Hansen - not a handle.

Christian

The thing about mistakes is that they will always look worse to you than to others... Every guitar emds up with slight differences for many reasons and while they jump out at the builder every time you look at the guitar, usually most are so minor that unless pointed out are not picked up on by others.

Pat, good looking guitar...I really like a terz size guitar...one of my favorite to play. Nothing wrong at all with that guitar, its just that the grain didnt match but if it sounds good and the rest of the guitar is well made than it is a success...great example.

What Shawn said.

I too love a good Terz. In fact, I've been wanting to build a few for some time now.
I saw the Martin "Sting" size 5 Terz at the '05 ASIA Symposium and fell in love with it.
I wanted to get a Terz kit at the auction, but a friend wanted to get the kit so he could tell his wife he was working on a size 5 for her, when in actuality, what he was working on was getting his wife a Martin "Sting" Terz, because she was a Sting fan. Anyway, I didn't bid on it out of respect for the romance of what he was doing. It was a pretty cool thing to do for her.

I have tons of Black Acacia and other woods like Brazilian and Honduran RW that would be perfect for size 5's, so I figured that might be a cool instrument to make for myself one of these days. I think the first one will have a redwood top.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

When I was bending the sides, I keyed off the dark grain near the back and
figured it was matched, but obviously, it wasn't. Took a long time before I
even noticed.

Thanks, guys. The body is finished. I put the rest of it on hold to build my
first commission. Hoping to finish it this summer.

I barely notice the grain mismatch now.

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now known around here as Pat Foster
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com