Well the weather reminded us that it is still technically winter with a nice little snowstorm. We ended up with about 6"-8" of fresh new snow. The sad thing is, all of the old snow from the last big storm finally was completely melted yesterday. Oh well, this shouldn't hang around for too long.
Anyways, I went out to the shop after plowing the driveway, to work on the OOO. First thing on my agenda was to try and bend some bloodwood bindings again. I took the four strips that I had sprayed with Super Soft, spritzed them with distilled water as suggested, wrapped them in foil and proceeded to put them in the bender. When I was working with the wood, it felt a lot 'bendier' than the dry pieces. My hopes were high. I got the wood temp up to 300 degrees and SLOOOOWLY started cranking it down. I got it all clamped and in shape after about 45 minutes of slow heavy pressure all along the bends. I let it cook for 10 minutes, then turned off the heat to let it cool down. We will check back with the bindings in a bit.
I went to work fine sanding my neck scarf joint cut, lining everything up, and gluing it in place. That is kind of a pain in the neck as the joint wants to slide apart as soon as any pressure is put on it. I finally got it all clamped up and drying. Then I needed to cut the neck block out of the piece of mahogany that LMI delivered yesterday. After a lot of careful measuring and checking grain directions, I had a block that was 3 MM too short. This might sound like a mistake, but following the LMI DVD instructions this is supposed to happen. He glues a small shim on the top of the block to make up the difference so I did the same. I glued and clamped these pieces together and set them aside to dry.
Back to the bindings. It was with great anticipation that I pulled the bindings off the bender, unwrapped the foil and inspected my work. Darn. 3 of the 4 snapped in the exact same place as the others snapped. So the tally is I have 3 good pieces, one usable piece with a small partial break that I fixed with CA glue, and 8 broken pieces. I am just not sure what I am doing wrong. I have the wood wet, enclosed in foil to help it steam, covered in Super Soft, and plenty of heat. I went really slow, with a lot of back pressure over the problem spot, and I was feeling the wood give all along the bend. I never felt a break. I still have 8 straight pieces that I can work with and I need to keep 2 of them for the fingerboard bindings. So I have 2 with the straightest grain I can find coated with Super Soft and I will try it again tomorrow. I would really like to have 4 pieces that are perfect instead of 3 perfect and one repaired to use. If I break these two, I think I will call 'UNCLE' (man I am showing my age with that!) and use what I have. The reason I don't want to use the repaired piece is that the CA made the repaired section turn dark. I don't know if I can sand it back to the red color of the rest of the wood. This may not be an issue because I am thinking that I will use the same method of gluing the bindings and perflings as I did with the Dreadnought where I taped it in and flooded it with CA glue. I haven't decided yet. I have some concerns with the bloodwood being next to the spruce. The bloodwood is really messy stuff and I would bet that it 'bleeds' the red color very easily. I know I will have to mask off the soundboard before I work with it just to keep red fingerprints off of it.
Anyways, this is a second call for help. If anyone out there has any secret knowledge regarding bending bloodwood I would be greatly appreciative if you would share that knowledge! Right now it is a very hit and miss thing, with mostly misses. At $2.00 a pop, I really don't like throwing money away like this.
Okay, here we go. Bending time.
Hmmm, that felt like it went pretty good. (Ignore the top slat sticking up on the right. I didn't get it lined up properly so it was about 1/4" too short to hold under the clamp.) Lets check back in about an hour.
While the bindings were cooking I glued up the head stock on the neck. I have to say, I really like the LMI glue. This is the first guitar I have used it on.
The neck block cut out of a big block of mahogany.
Bummer. The three pieces on the right broke in the same place as all the others have broken.
Here is the neck block glued up. I went ahead and marked out the tenon slot for the neck. I am going to cut this out before installing it on the guitar. The DVD shows him doing it after but I would much rather ruin this piece of wood with a bad cut than ruin this wood as well as the sides.
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