Side Bending

The next step in Rick's Tenor is to bend the sides, actually you could to several things next but I chose to bend the sides. It's my first time bending Walnut but it is suppose to bend easy and it did.. I also bent the Maple bindings. The process went well with no surprises.

I use a Fox style bender with a heating blanket and controller

After bending the sides are cut to length and placed in the form to help them hold shape until the end blocks and linings are installed.

Wrapping the sides for bending, parchment & foil

Sandwiched in the bender, spring steel - side - blanket - spring steel

Temp going up, max set to 290 which I did not even get to bending

Bend complete

Sides all trimmed and in the mould..

Next step will be routing the mortise in the neck block and gluing the blocks to the sides

Side Bending

So these are the first sides I've bend on a Fox Style bender all the others have been on a pipe. Things went pretty well except I got a some scorching of the inside face. Too hot a setting I guess, the good news is the sides bent very nicely with little spring back, I also bent the binding since I had the bender set up. I'm happy with  the bender I got from Blues Creek Guitars and the other parts from LMI, the controller and blanket.

Prepped to bend, a sandwich of wood and heating blanket between two steel slats

Bent and cooling off

The results, glued to the blocks and out of the form for a photo.