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John,

Do u do an overnite soak? Or just spray and go? Or does it depend on wood type? (Oily/dry)

Mike

Not John, but I’ve been using it based on his recommendation.
No need to soak, just spray and go is what I’ve been doing.
I’ve been happy with it.

Same here.

Dave

I work mostly with koa. I tried it and I had issues with stains, so I don't use it anymore. Truth is you should not need it if your wood is properly thicknessed, sawn right, and you are using a blanket over a bending form with adequate heat.-Bob

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“ The meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose of life is to give it away” Pablo Picasso

I have not had an issue with staining since I use untreated butchers paper Kraft paper is often acidic and reacts to a lot of things Clorine in town water so I stopped using Kraft paper a long time ago. I agree that water is fine 99% of the time. I just got in the habit of using windex with ammonia as it is much cheaper than Super Soft 2 and works about as well. I also use weights on the slats about 2 lbs each when they slip off your wood is ready to bend.
.075 in thick to .065 for most of my bending. DO NOT SATURATE too much moisture can cause warpage so just damp. I also do not use spring steel slats , if you do use them use some aluminum foil as a barrier.

There are many ways to do this. Find what works for you. Stay well everyone

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

I have tried water, Windex, and Super Soft II and honestly I didn't notice a difference. This was for very old BRW though so maybe that is why.

BRW is a pretty easy bend Figured woods like Maple are what I use it for one thing that wasn't mentioned was watts per sq in. I use only 5 watts per inch blankets. Lower than that the heat load takes too long to recoup

_________________
John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

I’ve tried water, veneer softener, & fabric softener I really don’t think I could notice a difference either. Just this weekend I bent a side set of curly walnut mostly that appears to be mostly riff sawn thicknesses to around .90” with not water or anything, just a hot pipe and patience. Either I’m living right or getting better Ok maybe a little water from a wet rag but no pre soak or anything.

I have only recently started, after 25 years of making guitars, using BRW and I don't know if it's because this stuff is so old or what but I have had the most difficult time bending this stuff. I even got one of your bending machines solely for this very expensive wood. The machine does a great job but this wood springs back like I've never seen before. And bending it on a pipe is not any better. This wood was cut in the 1950's. I know old wood hardens up with age so perhaps that has something to do with it.

Anyway becasue of that I got some Super Soft and didn't notice that it helped bend the rose wood at all.

My complaints about SSII is the long soak, and the staining. Especially with oily woods. Not noticed this with Windex. Surprisingly, I’ve not noticed much warping with Windex. I figured I would since it’s got to be mostly water.

what temps are you using on teh BRW???? I will take it to 325
but you can start bending lower bouts about 225 upper 250 waist about 275 then run to 325 then once you hit that temp
set the VAR setting to 275 F for about 10 15 min and let cool DO NOT TAKE OUT WARM

_________________
John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

We never got too preoccupied with temperatures for bending, as most of the bend will occur at or just above the liquid/vapor phase change temperature (100 deg C/212 deg F at sea level. By the time the local moisture supply had been cooked off and temperatures began to sprint towards 300 deg F, we were done bending and just needed the higher temps to fully dry the wood to set the bends. I never saw a side that was broken by bending too early, but I did see students bust a few by bending too late. If the waist is initially bent as the bending package starts generating steam (visible tendrils of the stuff curling off the sides of the stack...another reason for eschewing an envelope versus separate foil sheets), and the rest of the bends happen as quickly as possible, even woods that prefer less water (curly mahognay, koa, and anigre) will be fine. Also note that after rebending a fair number of otherwise nicely milled mahogany and koa kit sides for clients, we left mahogany, anigre, cherry, and just about anything but rosewood in the bender overnight. Rosewoods were happy to come out of the bender as soon as the side was down to shop temperature.

We never treated rosewoods with anything... Brazilian and coco in particular bends well dry, although wetting the paper as a moisture reservoir also grabs most of the resins that will need to be cleaned off the slats otherwise. The coco sides I've done would bend with what seemed like very minimal heat (we bent coco at minimum heat to avoid the excessive oxidation and color change of higher temps...if determined to cook the coco, do the same to the back set and any other bits used to make the color match). A longer, lower temperature post-bend cook at under 260 deg F peak worked well with coco to drain the wood of excess surface resins and minimize oxidation-related color changes.

We considered the acid test for a wood plastizer to be curly anigre or other difficult-to-bend, highly figured wood like fiddleback mahogany. SuperSoft II was cheap insurance on woods that behave badly on compression surfaces in terms of fiber collapse. We did experiment with Windex D, but got better results on scrap curly anigre and figured mahogany in terms of fiber collapse on tight cutaways with SSII, which might suggest that it really does not matter what is used as a bending aid (e.g., larger radius bends in unfigured stuff) until it does (e.g., 1" radius cuts in high-figure stuff). We saw SSII as a risk mitigation strategy for hard-to-bend or inconsistent woods, but as Mr. Stock noted, for some small number of side sets, bending was always going to be a gamble - a risk which could not be mitigated.

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For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan