Official Luthiers Forum!

Has anyone here purchased or tried the LMI side bender? I got a good look at it last summer at the ASIA Symposium and it was pretty cool but some actual "end user" feedback would be helpful.

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jw ( o)===:::

I don't know. I have looked at it too. I don't like the fact that it looks like you have to use their molds. Or that it would be more difficult to make your own molds if you wanted to. Making molds for a fox style bender isn't to hard. These molds have those slots that the rollers ride in so that looks like more work in just making molds. It's also expensive. You can build a fox style bender for far less then that....Mike

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Another day, another dollar.

I have helped a buddy bend with one and I think the PID controller would be a good investment if you don't want to put together a controller yourself, but the bender is a pain to use compared to the Fox style bender. That said it is well made and has some cool ideas but is over kill for a simple task.

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Fred Tellier
http://www.fetellierguitars.com
Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/FE-Tellier-Guitars/163451547003866

It is more work to make the molds but the precise action of the tension rollers is a worthwhile tradeoff for having to cut the slots. I recently had the opportunity to bend OM sides together with three other builders on three different bending machines. The other three were far more experienced builders than myself and all agreed that the LMI bender was worth the investment.

I think if you can build a guitar, making the forms shouldn't be too hard. I love my LMII bender. I have nothing bad to say about it other than not being able to do a cut away in it. The cantilever press makes getting sides in and out a breeze.

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

Yeah, Yukon's bender was da bomb... it worked really well, and that small blanket for the waist was really great.

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"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."

What is meant by "tensioned rollers"?

How about the waist support slat? Good idea, no?

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

The 'tensioned' rollers are held firmly against the side, heating blanket, and form with perfectly even pressure throughout the bending of the side (it's the reason for the slots.) This allows a very slow and deliberate movement of the roller throughout the bend.

Using the small heating blanket and slat in the waist makes for a less stressful, even heating/bending process that I imagine reduces the chance for cracks (especially for the less experienced among us.) Of course you may also perform this step without the LMI bender.

I sure agree that the rollers pressing against the outside of the at the tangent of the bend will help prevent wood fibers from lifting as well as fasceting. After studying the picture of the LMI bender a little more, I can see that the geometry of the pins in the slots and the rollers would press down on the bend. The extra blanket above the waist puts the heat on the inside of the bend where it needs to be to let the fibers compress.

I wonder if that open ended waist press could be adapted to the Fox. hmmm...

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Pat

The time that I saw one of these new machines up close, it seemed that when the rollers were turned, it pushed the wood backward so that the wood was not really held tight against the form, except at the point of contact between the roller and the wood.
I'm sure there's a workaround for that though. Nothing's perfect, but I'm not sure this is truly worth the extra expense. It seems to do the same job in a longer fashion. I like the apparnt ease of removing the side from the bender. That looks like it may be worth the price of admission in the long run.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

If you don't have the tension on the rollers correct, it will move the slat, but not so much the wood. Usually that occurs because you have over tightened the tension thingy (technical term LMII uses for the device) on the roller.

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

Thanks for all the great feedback so far.

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jw ( o)===:::

i haven't built one in a while but given the current cost of birch ply, press screws etc., you can build a fox type bending system including the blanket, slats, timer and controler for about $200.

i would prefer to put ithe $450 saved to feed my twin addictions, i.e., to w.a.s. or t.a.s.

just saying....

.

I have found the LMI bender to be one of the best tools I own. I did have to make my own form but that was not overwhelming for me and wouldn't be for anyone who can build a guitar.

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http://coneryguitars.com

Kill your television!

I'm saying'.

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

I'm reviving this thread to see if anyone has any additional thoughts about the LMII vending machine in the last three years.

Anyone want to comment about it verses a FOX style bender?

I had a chance to work with the LMI bender side by side with older fox benders. Palomar College here locally has a lutherie program and purchased three benders.

Personally, I did not like it. The problem was the roller design. It was fiddly to get the tension right. Rolling the pins was not intuitive. Not sure how it was an improvement over sliding a spring tensioned bar over the bends. I noticed that most of the students were opting for the older fox benders over the LMI bender given the choice.

I could be that it just has a learning curve, and when you master it the rollers really make sense. It seemed to be solving a problem for me that I didn't have. As a result, I never bothered to master the system and happily pulled out my trusty old bender.

I should point out that I have a home build CNC machine, so I'm not afraid of building my own complex jigs. I had intended on building myself an LMI copy using the CNC machine, birch ply, 8020 extrusions, and some surplus phenolic plastic, but in the end decided I really didn't want it.

Of course, like all tools/jigs, YMMV.

Thanks for your input on this rlrhett. I actually look at that thing from time to time and still wonder how well it works.

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jw ( o)===:::

Joe my bender is for sale ya know....

Shameless self promotion that this is....

It really looks cool but my 11 year old Fox design which I copied from his course has performed flawlessly with two heating blankets, a kitchen thermometer, and some mods that allow me to remove the top to drop the sandwich in and remove the bent side easily. I do have the old grey box LMI controllers with the built in timers and they have held up well.

A shout out to whoever came up with the wet brown paper trick and the technique of bending the waist 50%, doing the bouts and clamping them snug and then finishing the waist with good tension on the bottom slat. ( was that you John?) Also kudos to whoever introduced me to Super Soft.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

I started using Super Soft about 10-12 years ago because I was doing a lot of veneering back then. I decided to try it on a set of WF Bubinga and it worked fine. I told JJ Donohue about it and he wrote a post outlining how he used it. The rest is history.

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Beautiful and unusual tone woods at a reasonable price.
http://www.rctonewoods.com/RCT_Store
The Zootman
1109 Military Rd.
Kenmore, NY 14217
(716) 874-1498

Where IS that dude anyway?? I never hear from him anymore, since he fell madly in love and moved to CA and then down to NC. Sure do miss his building and his posts...

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"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."