[ben]

hey @patreon_65665670 –

so i substantially followed your recommendations with another test piece of sapele: spray with supersoft about 5 min before going into bender, wet down craft paper, spritz side with water, and get the stack into bender. i was able to get the whole bend including the cutaway done in ~5 minutes.

much better!

attached see pics of the side out of the bender, placed on the bending form for reference and then in the building form. if you look closely at the inside of the recurve on the first picture you can see small cracks forming, these became a bit larger on clamping into the building form. i imagine these could be from runout or perhaps lack of sufficient support.

i took the side out of the bender after ~1.5 hours (and after cycling back up to 290 f for 5 minutes after the initial bend and cool down to ~110 f); they were still a bit damp on unwrapping.

i think that making a shaped caul for the recurve to clamp into the building form could help to limit the cracking.

i’m so pleased with these results after many tries and clearly going in the wrong direction for a while.

thanks a _lot_ for the advice.

-ben

[ben]

[ben]

a few more photos: back of cutaway with caul, slats/blanket/side; close up of split at nose; bent side moved to building form.

[ben]

hi brock – thanks so much for your detailed response.

your notion that I’m taking too much time to bend and making the wood too wet – especially for crack prone mahogany – makes sense to me. as does the question of sufficient support around the cutaway. i am able to use the cutaway caul to guide the bend around the nose before driving it into the cutaway, but the recurve is less supported – which coincides with the relatively more cracking there than at the nose. i’m not sure how this differs from the s.m. ram, but i do think more support would help.

i’m going to give it a try incorporating your suggestions. i’ll report back.

again, thanks a lot for the advice.