I am just putting the finishing touches to the steel string guitar and will then provide a few pictures and an audio file.
I am also starting to improve the tools I am using. The side bending iron with the hot air gun is definitely not getting hot enough and that is what is causing all my bending problems. So I thought that the bending iron is the best place to start.
I pulled the hot air gun to pieces and removed the heating element. The element has a resistance of 49 Ohms and that means the power rating is 1175 Watts. The way they make these guns is they over-rate the element and to keep it from burning out they apply a fan that blows through the element keeping it stable and of course you get a nice hot air flow. The big problem with this method of using the hot air gun is that the fan is too noisy and wet wood seems to be getting the better of the hot air and hence it is just not hot enough to do the job.
I have ordered a reel of element wire to make my own heating element that provides the heat required silently (no fan). But while waiting I thought I would have a play with what I had. I measured off 4 pieces from the old element each with a resistance of 3.75 Ohms. In parallel that is just under 1 Ohm and with a 12 volt supply it will draw about 12 amp and give 144Watts. With the new element supported by lots of silver mica and stuffed into an aluminium tube it gets seriously hot and works very well.
I need to sort out a bit of temperature regulation and it will be ideal and quiet. It doesn’t sound like you are using lots of electricity when things are silent and so will allow me to do a slower (and better) job of bending sides. I just managed to bend a 4mm small piece of cherry without any problems. This will improve the standard of my workmanship somewhat.
The classical guitar was taken away yesterday, I am missing it already but I am feeling quite good about the fact that I made a guitar that someone else is playing.