Thanks to all the forum members who have posted their experiences bending bubinga sides. I just finished bending a set and they turned out fine in large part because I had the benefit of reading those posts and knew what to look out for going into it. I have a back and sides set with pretty wild waterfall figuring so I was expecting the bending to be a challenge. I went straight to treating the sides with Super Soft. Didn't even attempt to bend without it based on what I had read. I following the instructions on the bottle and bent the first side about 24 hours later on my hot pipe. I lightly spritzed the inside surface with water on the tight bends. I didn't get any cracking but did get a little bit of faceting. Of course one of the facets fell dead center in the waist bend so I had to shift the bend points to get the facet off of the tightest part of the bend. I did a second application of Super Soft directly on the facet and clamped the side in the body mold overnight and that took care of it. I also did a second SS application on the bookmatched spot on the unbent side and left it overnight. That seemed to help when I bent the second side the next day. The tight bends at the waist and the upper bout took quite a bit of force to bend. I was really leaning into the pipe using narrow wood blocks to concentrate the pressure close to the bend point. The sides were 0.08 thick.
This site is a great resource for someone like me just getting into building guitars. Thanks again.
