I have bent the Macassar Ebony sides. My new bending iron is a great success and functioned perfectly. I can actually feel the wood go soft as it gets hot, it has made side bending an absolute pleasure. If anyone wants to make something similar then I am happy to supply the source assembly code for the PIC16F876 or PIC16C63, the only other item required to build the bending iron is a 10amp 240vac solid state relay. Just ask and I will post the code on this blog.
The sides were quite a challenge as there was four splits in the wood and it was a bit warped, but I like a challenge. You can imagine the look of horror on my face when I broke one of the sides. I have repaired it okay and the proof of success will be in the final pictures, it should look fine. I only have a few pints of my home brew bitter left and I have started drinking the 40 pints of stout I made. I do have a fresh 40 pints of bitter fermenting and will be putting that in the barrel in another 4 days time. Beer has become an important ingredient to guitar making.
As you can see in the picture it is a pretty good snap. I didn’t know how far you can push this wood, but I do now.
It does make the side a bit difficult to bend when I have glued the break, because any heat and water is going to break the repair. By being very careful and using a clamped on metal block to take the heat away from the break I did finally manage it.
As can be seen the bracing has been cut. It seems a bit strange to me that the sizes stated for each bracing piece is quite large as compared to what remains after carving, it appears that you carve away about 75% of the wood. So I decided to cut the bracing a lot less than suggested, I will only be carving about 25% away.
I have used a small piece of rosewood from a previous back for the bridge patch. I am basically making a copy of the old Suzuki, the big difference is that my copy is about 15mm bigger, the Suzuki does not have a bridge patch and I couldn’t decide whether to use one or not. As the picture shows I made my decision.
So as the picture above shows, this is where I am up to, I probably will not get any more done today but at least the blog is up to date.