Official Luthiers Forum!

I was talking to a guy at a wood shop in San Diego last weekend about bending wood...specifically bindings. He said soemthing about people now using ammonia fumes and a fuming tent to get the wood flexible enough to bend. From the arm/hand motions and his description, he made it sound like the wood is just like spaghetti for about 15-20 minutes until the fumes escape the pores.
I did some preliminary web research and cannot find anything about this other info about it as a wood colorant using the ammonia to react with the tannic acid present in certain species. Nothing about using this as a wood bending agent/aid.
Is this a complete load of bull, a misguided individual, somewhere in between, or what?

_________________
“If God dwells inside us like some people say, I sure hope He likes enchiladas, because that's what He's getting”
-jack handy

Well I surely can not answer that for you, but I can welcome you to the OLF. A great forum. Someone here will be able to answer you question.

J,

I have heard of people using it for coloring wood especially in mission style furniture making but never to bend wood.
BTW, I saw J buffing up an OM model KTM9 finished guitar last night and it is BEAUTIFUL!! Any chance of getting some pics up here for all to see? This is J's first guitar and he did it right!

Here is some info on bending with Ammonia NH3 like the man said the gas turns wood into spaghetti for about 15 minutes. Pretty cool but not practical for the small builder.

http://www.woodcentral.com/cgi-bin/readarticle.pl?dir=shop&f ile=articles_295.shtml

And at the bottom of the page:
http://www.joelwoodworks.com/index_files/page0111.htm

That is pretty interesting.

_________________
Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com