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June 23rd....Well, I spent all day today (from around 8:00 a.m. till now (around 8 p.m.) doing the bending on the electric bending iron, and I discovered one thing: I don't much like bending maple!!! It is SO much harder than bending rosewood or mahogany....or at least it seemed that way to me. It felt so stiff compared to rosewood. I did okay on the first, longest piece (the piece starting with the scroll and ending at the bottom point). The second short piece went okay, too. But when I got to the piece that attaches to the neck block (the treble side, that is) I had SO much trouble. I kept cracking the two curves there, no matter what I tried to do! Maybe because the two curves are so close together, in such a short section ---- maybe that's why it kept resisting any further curve I needed to put into it. At any rate, I did manage to complete all the bending, although it was not a perfect fit to the form and the neck block and scroll, and I had to glue cracks there. I had a real tough time getting the ends of the two side pieces to curve around enough to neatly fit into the recesses in the neck block. |
One thing...I didn't have any problems with scorching (I kept a wet cloth over the outside bends). And, to try to minimize the cracking, I held a strip of aluminum on the outside bend of the maple as I bent. Above is the ultimate result. |
