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I am building a side bender similar to the Fox style. I haven’t been able to find anything definitive on what type of springs to use on the bender. Not ever sure how springs are specified. Any enlightenment would be appreciated.

I just used springs from a chest expander.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Had to look on line to see what a chest expander was. Yes, lots of springs. So you just cut them down to size and bend out a loop to attach to the eyebolt on the bender? If not strong enough just cut a little more off?

Exactly.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

If you have a local Ace hardware, one that has all the little drawers of nuts and bolts, there is a drawer or springs. When I built a uke bender I literally took it into the store to try a few different sizes until I hit paydirt.

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John Hall Blues Creek may have them, he used to.

Thanks everyone for the further input. I did find bender spring sets on John Hall’s site but had already found some springs that seem to work at Ace Hardware. Tested the unit out today and had some significant problems with temperature control. I had purchased the router speed control unit from Rockler as recommended in several places on the web I had visited. The heating mat I purchased had a built-in variable dial delineated in Centigrade but testing it alone, it seemed to be totally useless. I just set it to max and was depending on the router controller. Temp was pretty variable and at one point got as high as 350 F and saw some smoke (maybe only steam?) but the walnut ukulele side I was testing seemed to come out fine. The process must be a bit more forgiving than I anticipated. Time will tell I guess. I will be closing out this thread after a few more days as I move on to other issues, i.e. neck tenon routing jig.