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What can I expect bending cherry? Yes it will be a venetian style cutaway.

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Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.

Bends like butta, brutha. I have bent cherry from .060" - .090" with no issues at all. Go a bit thinner in the cutaway area and you should be fine. Enjoy the aroma therapy while you are at it

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tim...
http://www.mcknightguitars.com

I was about to say that it bent like maple, but that is not entirely accurate. It bends like walnut. It can be a little more brittle than maple. You should have no problem

I bent cherry sides once, and the only problem I had was that tap water and heat brings out some nasty green hues and patches in cherry. If I were bending cherry again, I would use distilled water and less of it.

I just bent some Curly Cherry from Bobc for a venetian cutaway and noticed lots of ripples in the sides. I think this is because of the curly of the wood. I'll be doing lots of scraping and sanding to get this out. I don't soak my wood either, just a spritz on both sides from a water bottle. Maybe if I used no water it would have been better. Don't know since this was the first time with Cherry. But I do like working with it!
Tracy

Cherry does bend great. It is somewhat related to maple, but I find also that it is a little bit more prone to cracking than soft maple. I've bent tons for Shaker Oval Boxes, and found that lots of water was necessary to keep it from burning on a pipe. I've never bent any for guitar sides, but would expect the same results that Tim has had.

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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."

John, I just bent my first sides last week and I used cherry. Thicknessed to .08 they bent very easily. They weren't curly and there are no ripples. I soaked for 10 minutes (which I now think was way over doing it) and used a fox style bender with light bulb heat. It went really well. I was very nervous since it was my first attempt. Like Kelby, I used tap water and have some green staining to get rid of, but the bending was very nice. My next two guitars are also going to be cherry. I have some nice curly cherry b/s sets from Steve at Colonial and I can't wait to do them, BUT i will spritz instead of soak and I will use distilled water.

Ron

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OLD MAN formerly (and formally) known as:

Ron Wisdom

Somewhere in the middle of Arkansas......

I had similar results to those described by Tracy. I used a mild spritz with distilled water and wrapped foil around the side. It bent easily at around 300* using light bulbs. I was eventually able to sand and scrape out the waveness of the figure and it turnrd out beautifully. It may well be excess water that causes this but I can't say for sure. Perhaps it's the "Revenge of the Zootman" effect!

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

I just bent some of that wave sapele and it bent beautifully. I asked John Hall for some tips on bending figured wood and he suggested placing the wood between brown kraft paper. Mist the wood both sides then spray the paper untill it's wet. Place in your bender using the metal slats as usual. I heat the wood with an electric blanket to 290 -300 deg. Crank down the waist caul just enough to hold the sanwich together. I use some spring clamps to keep the sandwich tight. Bend the lower bout first then the upper bout and the waist last. This keeps the metal slats tight to the wood and under tension. I keep at this temp for another 5-7 min. After it cools down to room temp I recycle again at around 275 deg or so for 10 min. to make sure the wood is good and dry. Most of the time I will leave it in the bender the whole day. I think you need to make sure the side is really dry before removing from the bender. It's the water that is making the wood wavey.

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     I found that sometime aluminium foil will react to the resins in cherry. Use wet paper if you have flame or figured cherry.
     use as little water and more heat. 325-350 for about 4-5 minutes max
john hall