With a little extra time on my hands over the holiday I decided to jump in to my latest builds. This winter’s project will be three acoustic builds: a Gibson-style 0-28VS Parlor, a Taylor-style GS-Mini, and another OM (probably with a florentine cutaway).  Two, and perhaps all three will be made with this Chechen wood. Here’s a couple of shots of the wider planks.

Fantastic figure and color!

I built a standard bending jig with 2×150 watt bulbs and 1×100 watt bulb. Spring steel bending slats.

Lacking a drum thickness sander, I opted for manual labor. The sides were planed down to a little over 0.13″. I then used a card scraper to take them down to just under 0.1″. Finally level sanding them using a hardwood block guided one either side with a 12 gage strip of welding steel. The 12 gage steel comes in at almost exactly 0.11″ thick. The sandpaper then sands down slightly below the height of the welding steel. You can add a few sheets of paper under your wood if you want to thin it out a little bit more. This doesn’t seem like a lot to take off, but it makes a huge difference in ease of bending.

The sides were wetted for about 15 minutes, then wrapped in tin foil. Bending took about 20 minutes each. This was my first time bending and I was very pleased with the results.

I’ll get the neck and tail blocks on tomorrow. Then its time to repeat the process for the GS-Mini and the OM.