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Steam Box Idea… What’s wrong with this idea?
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Steam Box Idea… What’s wrong with this idea?
Speaking of Trevor Gore… I’ve started using falcate bracing on my ukuleles and in making the braces, 3 strips of .0625″ spruce are bent and then put in a bent lamination glue up rig using epoxy.
Bending spruce is no fun on a hot pipe. It’s slow, fussy, the fibers want to delaminate. I have been thinking about building a small dedicated steam box. Pulling all 3 of the strips out at once and bending them over a form with a metal backing strap on the far outside strip to hold the outside fibers in place. Then I will use a vise with a dedicated positive and negative caul built into it that is the proper shape to hold the stack while it cools.
This seems like overkill for one instrument at a time, but (if this works) my plan is to batch build a pile of braces so I have some ready to go when I start a new instrument.
Has anyone tried a steam box in a guitar building application like this? As long as I use a metal backing strap on the far outside piece while I bend them I don’t see why this shouldn’t work, but before I go to all the trouble to construct all of this I wanted to see what experience others have had positive or negative.
Thanks.
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5 Replies
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I used a cheap (<25$) Amazon steam cleaner output directed down a PVC pipe to soften fairly thick walnut binding. It came out soft enough to pre-bend easily around a bending iron and then onto a parlor guitar form without splintering. Just don’t do it in a humidity controlled space …
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Ok, good to hear you had success. Thanks.
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Cool! (Hot?). Why not. Have used steam in the past to bend ribs in boatbuilding tradition and have thought about applications of jigging bent guitar parts and heating/cooling in steam box. Steam’s been used to shape wood in other mediums for ages. There are some great vids on the tube of steaming furniture parts you’ve probably seen. Go for it man! Experiment for the rest of us. It’s gonna work.
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Thanks. I will give it a shot and report back.
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I tried it once for trying to bend mandolin sides. This was in 2006, back when the internet wasn’t nearly as useful as it is today, so the attempt was pretty incomplete I think.
If I remember correctly I used a pvc tube and the steamer I was using for taking necks off. Probably underkill. Anyway, it didn’t produce a significant advantage for trying to keep the maple breaking on the figure lines around the scroll so I ditched out.
I think now it would totally be worth trying to get a rig going.
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