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I've never used one of these types of benders, although I've seen commercial ones in the Taylor videos. I realize they are probably much more consistent, but how long does it take to bend a side? I recon it takes 30-45 minutes to heat my bender and bend a pair of sides by hand.

Here is my bender. It's a cross between an LMI, and a fox style bender. The blanket, slats, and temp controller are from LMI. The thing I like about the design is that I can simply loosen a couple screws and adjust it to any form I want. I currently have 5 guitar shapes, and a baritone ukulele form. It works like a champ!

Cheers, M

That is very impressive. Where did those towers come from? It looks like the lmi gear, but not exactly. For one, you have a cutaway tower. Where did you source those parts?


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All of the aluminum extrusions are sourced through 8020.inc. Everything else is done on my cnc machine.

I use bungee cords on both ends of my top slat. I think it helps with heat transfer and also helps to prevent cross grain ripples. The latter effect might be in my mind but seems to work for me...............!! Tom

Cool. What is the black material? Looks like I'm going to copy you wholesale!


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Barry,

I plan to do a cutaway on it. I believe adding one clamp with do it just fine. In fact, if you look at the big fox bender style in this thread above you see two large screw press clamps - one for the waist and one for the cutaway. This is a common apporach I've seen. I can simply add 2 additional holes in a cutaway shapped mold and add one more small clamp like my waist clamp to pull the wood into the cutway. So I'll bend, in order, the big bout, then small bout, then waist, and finally the cutaway.

By the way, often the small bout clamp is not needed since the springs pull the small bout wood tight against the mold. (Note that the spring lever arms are adjustable when needed for various mold sizes.) If the small bout clamp is needed due to some really stiff wood, then it is the last clamp tightened to pull the wood against the mold. It obviously has to remain loose untill the waist and cutaway are bent and tight in place.

Ed

I've never used one of these types of benders, although I've seen commercial ones in the Taylor videos. I realize they are probably much more consistent, but how long does it take to bend a side? I recon it takes 30-45 minutes to heat my bender and bend a pair of sides by hand.