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Last night, I bent some figured maple into an OM shape. I have a bender, but I'm trying to really improve my hand bending so I did this over an iron. It actually went pretty well! My bending skills have improved somehow, which is amazing considering I hardly ever bend by hand. To bend, I just spritzed both sides with my spray bottle, and went for it.

So I go down this morning to do some touch up work, and I always do that dry. I couldn't believe how much easier the curly maple seemed to bend dry. It took more force but it had no tendency to at all to tear out, make flat spots, etc.

Am I missing something here? SHOULD I be bending curly maple dry all the time? Maybe it was just this one piece....it actually has a pretty spectacular figure and I could really feel it right on the edge of falling apart when I was bending it wet.

Just wondering what ya'll think.

I usually spritz it just a bit, and wipe most of the water off with my hand. The water helps keep the wood from scorching, I find, and is still not enough to split it apart at the curls.

The worst bending experience I had was after soaking maple for 5-10 minutes (maybe longer, I forget) in a hot bath. I busted my test piece every few inches, until I figured out (no pun intended) that I needed to remove the water from the equation.

Interesting, I'm going to put this to the test this weekend, I busted up 4 out of five pieces last weekend trying to bend them. This does make some sense though, all of my pieces broke right along the figure lines. The difference in hardness between the figured section and the plain maple had me in fits!

John: The only figured maple I've bent was for bindings. These are always bent dry on a form with a blanket. Have had excellent success.
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

Tom, I'm wondering if the difference in porosity between the figured and straight maple is to blame here. I had my wood fairly wet and when I'd place it on the iron the water would boil through to the top at the figure lines right away. It would become very pliable while the wood between figure lines or rays, remained stiff. Basically this led to breaking the wood in facets rather than bending it smoothly across the length of wood.

I'm bending some 1/16" banding strips that are going around the sides of my electric. I have a feeling that the dry method will allow me to heat the whole strip uniformly, while avoiding making the rays too soft.

double post

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

I try to use as little water as possible when bending wood in general, and most resinous exotics bend easily with very little, or without water. I make the occasional F-style mandolin in figured maple, which has some pretty sharp bends. I haven't had much luck bending those dry, I find that at least some water is helpful. Maple is quite sensitive to the right temperature, so once you get the feeling for it, even the curly or birdseye will bend readily. I don't find it necessary to thin the sides more where the sharpest bends will be, but that is one method for making it a bit easier; mine are all 2 mm or so. I bend all mandolin rims and guitar cutaways on the hot pipe

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

This is ancient history.....I built one guitar 25/26 years ago, the ultimate maple cutaway OMish in size.
I bent on a hot pipe, 2-1/2 inch , heavy wall aluminum. Totally soaked the wood. It bent just fine felt like plastic and the pipe really dried the wood out quickly. Did not know any better. Finished it up and got a divorce, the guitar vanished.......

As dry as possible, figured maple when made too wet will kind of explode in the figure, you don't need any moisture to bent wood, only temperature matters. but to avoid burning-marks some water helps, especially at the waist. the rest I bent more or less without any water , the pipe quite hot...and fast.

cheers, alex

What temperature do you use for figured Maple on a Fox type bending machine?

Max

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Max Bishop
Brighton, Michigan

Guess that my problem about being really good at starting things but not so good at finishing things might have helped my marriage.....(I'm VERY fortunate to have a VERY understanding wife!)

Dave

Had some success today, it took a really long time but I managed to get my guitar wrapped. I think one problem I was having was not enough heat, I used a hotter part of my pipe today. It's really more about letting the weight of your hands move the wood when it's ready than it is trying to bend it with your muscles. I thinned out the banding where the most severe bends needed to take place and let the wood tell me when to bend. Every once in awhile I would spritz the wood, but never saturate it. It's still hard to get a tight bend that is smooth across it's whole arc, it really wants to bend more at the figured parts and leave flat spots in between. I managed to glue it up tight enough to take out most of it though.

Here's a pic, I am pretty dang happy right now!



and here's one showing how tight it needed to be:



as careful as I was gluing up, I managed to get a couple spots where the banding just wasn't tight. I'm thinking of drizzling some epoxy into the gaps to make sure I don't have any weak spots. I was wondering if anybody would recommend thinning it down to make sure it really gets in there?