Official Luthiers Forum!

so far i have only done Mahogany and EIR
but something about this stuff is making me nervous
should I be??

Steve, you can use a backer in the tighter areas like the waist. Flashing from a local hardware store works.

_________________
Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

You'll also want to insulate it from any iron in the bending pipe. If it's a heated aluminum pipe, o worries, but iron will react with the wood and stain it. At least it does with black acacia.

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Go slow. It will want to open on you. Don't use too much water as its very porous and the water will simply pass through it and overly soften the short interlocked fibers forming the figure and make them more prone to lifting.

Years ago I had a few emails that went back and forth between me, Larry Breedlove and Jim Goodall. I emailed Larry to ask if he had any suggestions given how many sets of koa Taylor bends and his response was, "other than getting rid of your exquisitely tight cutaway, prayer."

I forwarded his response to Jim Goodall, who also uses a lot of koa, who responded, "Well, there is merit to Larry's method," i.e., prayer.

I'm not a religious man. But in bending figured koa, pray.

I bent a Weiss shape using fig-Koa, and I don't remember having any probs.
No tight bends on that shape.
I used a terry washcloth kept moist over an aluminum pipe,
and I had no idea what the temp was.
I'm sure it raised the RH of the work area with all that steam'
I think it was a little harder to bend than maple,
both at.095".
Definitely not the most difficult wood I've bent so far,
out of 6-7 builds.
The beast in my avatar was really difficult.
Ribbon Af. Mahog.

yeah..I thought so

Im not really getting a warm fuzzy feeling...

If the koa is figured with curl across the grain, go ahead and be nervous. It's the right way to be. Plain select koa or koa with a little shimmery curl is as easy as mahogany to bend. Curl all the way across, tigerstripe fashion, can be really bad news. Maybe it's time to think about a bending blanket? With a blanket, you'll rarely ever break any wood. The blanket is the only expensive part. The rest can be pretty jive. Support bending sheets of aluminum flashing from the hardware store, a bending form made completely from plywood with no cover, no heating controls needed. Funky make do stuff works just about as good as the fancier versions most of us use. If you get more serious about it, you can always upgrade. One successful curly koa bend will pay for the blanket! Good luck.

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