Vacation is over....

...and it's time to get back to work building guitars. If you remember, I am going to build a 12 fret size 0 redwood and striped Honduran mahogany. In December I joined the top and back plates and built the bender mold, but didn't do anything else as I was pre-occupied with the twins. Today was the day to bend the sides. I was a bit nervous about this bend as the wood is highly figured striped mahogany and as such, it has a great tendency to want to crack or have the grain separate. I did a lot of research on the most reliable way to bend it and got to work. A couple of days ago I thinned the sides down to .075" thickness and then spritzed them with SuperSoft 2. I let them dry for a couple of days so the wood was ready. I wrapped the sides in kraft paper that was lightly spritzed with distilled water so there was some moisture to help the bend by allowing steam to penetrate, but not enough to get the wood wet. There is some mixed opinions on bending mahogany. Some say to bend it wet and hot, yet others say bend it dry, fast, and hot. I decided to go towards that dry, fast and hot method. I got the wood up to 295 degrees and started the bend. Everything went well and much to my delight, both sides came out beautifully. This was some expensive wood so I wasn't too thrilled at the idea of ruining a set of sides and ending up with an orphan back. I cut the sides to length and clamped them in the side mold. Next up will be making and gluing in the neck and tail blocks.

I received my shop air cleaner on Thursday and got it installed in the shop. I hung it directly over the table saw with the input facing the sanding and routing area. My thinking is I want the dust to be pulled up into the unit as quickly as possible. The unit is very quiet and it seems to be effective according to my highly scientific testing. I took a handful of saw dust and threw it in the air in front of the input. The dust was quickly drawn in and trapped by the filter. I forgot to take a picture today but I will tomorrow.

This is the second side after being bent. I had to shorten the base of my bender a little bit because the parlor size mold is so much shorter than the other sizes I have built.

One of the sides just out of the bender. Note all of the oil that has penetrated the paper. It is a lot easier to toss some dirty paper than it is to clean up the bending slats!

And here is a bent side. No splits, cracks or scorches.

The sides clamped in the mold.

There was one section of one side where the wood grain separated a little bit. You can see it here as black horizontal lines on the left side. Fortunately that was the only spot that this happened, and it is well outside the profile area so it is no problem. The cracks are however all the way through and I can see light through them if I hold the sided up to a window. I am very glad this didn't happen in the middle of the side!