Official Luthiers Forum!

hello all

my name is simon and i am a long time lurker and avid reader of your forum.

congratulations on creating such a great resource.

this is my first question of many. i have built a couple of classicals from eir and deceided to try euro maple and padouk.i do my bending with a pipe and managed to break both sets. is there a difference bending these woods or am i just heavy handed.i used the same temperature that i bend eir at.thanks in advance. simon

Sorry to hear that Simon... I don't have the answer for you as it sounds like you have more experience that me. But welcome to the OLF and someone should be stopping by with some more info. 

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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

welcome aboard simon!

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sweat the small stuff.

Welcome Simon to the OLF.  You are way ahead of me, but someone will have a good answer for you.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Hi Simon and welcome to the OLF,

Just curious what the thickness was of the sides?  I have only bent one set with a pipe bender and used black walnut for the sides at 0.085" thick including the venetian cutaway  (which I have learned is a bit thick compared to most ). 

How wet were they...misted or soaked with water?  Was the maple figured?  I think the experts will want to know these details in order to help diagnose the issue.  BTW, I have a padauk set to bend for a future guitar, so I am especially interested in the responses. 

Hope to see you around,

Laurie

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Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

I've only tried bending padauk once. It was for bindings and I could not bend
them without breaking them, no matter what I tried. - Justin

I learned with a recent lesson in bending leopardwood that all woods are not created equal. My first try at bending this stuff looked like I had bent it with bulldozer tracks

I cant answer your question directly, but I will offer this tidbit of experience:

Bending with an iron is somewhat of an art. You have to feel the wood bending without applying a lot of pressure. When the lignon of the wood turns loose, it will be obvious. If you are the type (like me) that likes to see quick response to pressure, then breaking is going to be part of the course. I have broken my share of wood with an iron, and that is the main reason I bend with a blues creek bender now. Sometimes it is fractures in the wood (called "shakes") that can cause a break, sometimes the way the wood was cut, sometimes it is just being overzealous in your bending technique.

Maybe some pictures of the wood that broke along with the thickness would help us decide which one of these many problems it was.

By the way, Welcome to the forum!

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Reguards,

Ken H

I don't know about the Padouk but figured maple seams to break apart if soaked. Bend it a little drier, lightly spritzed.
You can also back it up with a piece of sheet metal in the tighter areas, that will also help.
Good luck.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

I have only very limited bending experience, so you might as well ignore what I will type below.

So far I only bent a set of binding, bloodwood, on a weak 25W iron.
The first stripe took me a healthy number of hours, and at the very final inch It broke (glued back with CA, almost invisible repair)
The second stripe was done on the next day, and It only took me a half hour, I guess because the experience, I knew when I need to drive the wood and when i should wait for more heat to get in.
For me it felt that when it is hot enough and ready to bend, it feel like bending copper or aluminium.  If it feels springy like steel, then it is going to break.  This is just a very simple wording, but....

I guess that in your place I would not scrape the ruined sets.  Keep bending them, try to make smth useful, like a flower pot collar, anything. 

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Build log

[QUOTE=simonh]

hello all

my name is simon and i am a long time lurker and avid reader of your forum.

congratulations on creating such a great resource.

this is my first question of many. i have built a couple of classicals from eir and deceided to try euro maple and padouk.i do my bending with a pipe and managed to break both sets. is there a difference bending these woods or am i just heavy handed.i used the same temperature that i bend eir at.thanks in advance. simon

[/QUOTE]

i bend with a pipe, and i suggest you get some waste wood to practice with. bending with a pipe isnt as easy as it looks. i havent bent paduk because that wood just hasnt ever made me want to build with it. i soak my sides for about 5 min before i bend them. i think the most important thing to bending with a pipe or iron is waiting for the wood to loosen up and bend and all woods arent the same,  using moderate pressure so when the wood starts to give you will know.

maybe you got some old, brittle wood??

Mark

thanks all of you  i only got your replies now the time difference means im in bed when your posting.

im working in mm over here the padouk was 2mm and the maple was 2.8mm. the padouk started well but exploded when i spritzed it.i wondered if the moisture expanded through the wood too quickly.the maple just didnt want to bend, it was lightly quilted and when it broke it broke on the quilt. i tried using baking foil on the bends with limited sucess.i have bent a few sets of eir and pau ferro with no problems  you can feel when they are good to bend but the maple feels so dry and unoily(real word ?).i suppose having read some of you saying that you had broken only one set in 200 bends is making me feel stupid ,having just broken two in a row. i have another set of maple and am afraid to bend it without more knowledge.so any more tips ? thanks simon

ken thanks for the reply .but i dont know how to upload photos yet .i registered on the forum months ago but yesterday was the first time i was able to log in ,computers are not not my thing.ill have to find out how to attach a photo.

simon

Perhaps 2.8mm is way too thick ? Most builders seem to orbit around 2mm.  It is a serious difference.

For uploading: when you post, you have a menu with several buttons above the typing box. The button in the upper row, extreme right is the upload, it has an arrow on it.

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Build log

2.8 mm is way, way too thick. 2.2 to 1.8mm (2.0 is what I shoot for) is reasonable.

Simon,

    Welcome to what you will quickly find is the absolute best forum online
for guitarists and guitar builders. You'll make a bunch of friends here.


   I have bent several thousand sets of sides and have bent all but one set
on a pipe. I actually prefer it to a bender. I have two great Fox style
benders and bent a single set of sides on them only to go back to my
pipe.


   I've bent lots of Padauk and lots of Maples with every possible figure
variation with great results. Bending on a pipe is defintely an acquired
skill that comes from practice and paying close attention to the
differences in how each set of wood behaves when exposed to the heat of
the pipe ad pressure applied by the bending individual.


   Every species exhibits a certain set of bending chracteristics and they
can vary broadly from one to another. Some woods seem to bend with
little effort and with little trouble....even in the very tightest bends. Others
seem to be determined to fight you on every front as they resist any
amount of pressure and appear to be impervious to any amount of heat
and moisture.

   As you bend more stubborn woods like Padauk, understand the desired
effect of the combination and the water on the wood. The water is simply
present to be activated to perform its duty when the proper temperature
is applied to the surface that is wet with it. The explosion that occurs as
the water is heated to its oiling point forces the resulting steam into the
pore structure of the wood...allowing it to be forced into submission to
the pressure applied.

   Be sure that you are heating a surface area well beyond the desired
bend area. I always heat the four or five inches to either side of the center
of the target bend area. As you bend the fibers of the wood outside of the
target area are affected and need to be as pliable as possible in
preparation for the bend.

    Don't hesitate to rewet the area with water as it dries under the heat in
order to provide anothe blast of steam that will penetrate deeper into the
side.

    I also always wet both sides of the wood before laying it to the bending
iron. As the wood heats up, you find that the water on the outside will
begin to turn to steam preparing the entire thickness of the side for the
bend to be completed.

    With Maples, other rules may apply. I use far less water when bending
Maples than with other woods. The Maple, especially when heavily figured
with flame or quilt, can become saturated very quickly as the water is
heated and forced into its structure. When saturated, Maples can begin to
bend with undesirable rippling that tends to follow the figure as the
arying debsity levels present present the same variations in the flexibility
along the length of the side.

    I always heat my Maple on the dry pipe before spraying ti at all. I like it
to be hot enough that a very light spray of water from my bottle steams
on the surface when it hits it.

    Take your time and feel the wood as it relaxes under relatively
conservative pressure and with light water applications. That's my favorite
part of the bend process...to feel the wood give in to my coaxing as I
carefully consider its unique bending characteristics and its unique
resistence to the combination of heat and water and pressure.

    
    I don't know if this helps at all or of it's just going to seem like a bunch
of rambling....but I hope it helps. Bending is one of those things that is
tough to describe or teach without being next to the person you're trying
to help with a piece of wood in your hand and a hot iron clamped to your
bench.


Regards,
Kevin Gallagher/Omega Guitars   

Thanks, Kevin!
Excellent pointers.
Another one to pin to the shop wall, since I have both padauk and curly maple sides on the list.

Cheers
John

kevin thank you for your detailed reply. that wasnt rambling ask my wife she knows rambling. im glad to hear someone else bends with a pipe by preference,

the padauk looked exactly as ken said -buldozer tracks- when i finished. when i applied water to the inside of bend i could see the vapour explode through the wood and leave hole behind.too hot? 

 the thickness i gave earlier for the maple should have been 1.8 mm (didnt read my own post). the width of the sides was 100mm which makes covering the whole bend with your hand very difficult.compared to eir what temperature would bend maple at? it felt like a real workout compared to eir it never felt like it it softened.

again thanks for your reply i know nothing compares to hands on experience.

simon

I used to use a pipe but have found better success on difficult woods with a silcon heating blanket and a bending form. I don't like the loss of "feel" that I would get with a pipe but it probably didn't help matters that I was not using a thermostatically controlled pipe so there was way to much variability on the temperature. Plus I think the blanket does a better job of heating the wood in front of and behind the are being bent. I bent some highly figure lacewood sides with the heating blanket and got only minimal cracking that was easily sanded out.
Bob