Zach Lefebvre TreeHouse Guitars
Forum Replies Created
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I’ll second that recommendation! Vince is great and sells some great wood!
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Hi Nicholas,
I would agree with Anthony, it sounds like you need a larger surface area to heat up the wood. A small pipe only allows you to heat up a small area at one time. I have the ibex bending iron and the flattest part is the part I use most, first thoroughly heating up an area then slowly moving the wood to tip it downward once it is “relaxing” from the heat. Generally I leave my sides at 2.0-2.2mm, but certain woods like ebony and snakewood I’ll sand down to 1.9mm. Some woods benefit from soaking, but for the most part I’ve found soaking sides causes more issues than solves them. Especially in figured woods – don’t soak those! I spritz the wood as I go and never have issues with scorching and sides stay much flatter than when I used to soak them.
The crinkles in your photo tend to happen with really light-density woods. It’s the wood compressing and basically crushing. I don’t really know a solution to this other than to try to avoid super low-density woods for sides.
Another great tip is to first overbend all curves then unbend starting from the waist outward. It saves you a ton of time chasing curves back and forth.
Like everything else, you get to know tricks as you bend more and more sides.
Hopefully this helps!
-Zach
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Hi Frans,
You can flatten out warped back plates using 3 large tiles and a kitchen oven (your oven has to be large enough of course). First you need to seal the endgrain of the plates, I use thin CA glue. Heat up the tiles to about 190 degrees Fahrenheit then dampen the plate surfaces and clamp them up in a double decker tile sandwich. Leave them clamped in the tiles for 8ish hours or until the tiles and wood have thoroughly reached room temperature. When you take the sandwich apart they should be dead flat.
With all that being said, I generally thickness my backs to a final measurement of 2.6mm… so already those plates seem thin as far as my building style goes.
Hopefully I’m not too late replying for this to be helpful!
-Zach
