Ken Parker Archoppery: Bending Sides 1

This is video #1 of 4 in this series about bending sides on Ken Parker's archtop guitars.
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KEN: Bending wood is always challenging, but bending figured wood, i.e. curly or blistered wood so highly prized for sides and matching backs, is especially difficult. Figured wood is in danger of short grain failure, sometimes breaking almost straight across in a classic “ tear on dotted line” catastrophic burst, and also tends to bend unevenly, with lumps and kinks where the grain turns around. Danger, Will Robinson.

Anticipating this bad behavior, it’s tempting to start with a little extra thickness, so that any distortions can be carefully sanded out after bending. Unfortunately, a little extra thickness will add significantly to the bending problems, because the stiffness of a material is proportional to the cube of the thickness. For example, this means that bending a .100”, or 2.54mm side will be experienced as eight times more difficult than bending a .050”, or 1.27mm side.

Let me suggest that best practice is to start with the desired finished thickness, plus a few percent, then bend, restrain, and gently cook the side in a precisely made, heated pinch mold, so that it can dry out and “set” in exactly the shape you design.

To read Ken's entire monograph on bending sides, please visit:
https://kenparkerarchtops.com/etude-b...
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This video is part of Ken Parker's Archtoppery series. We recommend you check out his Archtoppery page on his website: https://kenparkerarchtops.com/archtop...