Trying to change the ratios between inspiration, perspiration and frustration. It doesn't make this process easier to convey when I wait too long between blog entries and forget my password. However, there are a few minor breakthroughs in my personal guitarbuilding development. I'd tell you, but then you'd know the secrets. Let's just say, 3 dimensional objects combined with wood movement and lack of desire to learn modeling software leave this caveman luthier no choice but to devise ever-increasingly bizarre tools, jigs and methods. Like chopped flat pencils mounted to scrap spacers tracing a 3d profile onto a bent side, riding inside a 15' radius domed workboard. Sshhh, don't tell anyone.
After using the wonderful and almost universally used 'Fox bending machine' (named after one of my heroes, who now resides in Portland) to bend sides in the past, I have now regressed to the hand bending method which involves a hot pipe, sizzling water on the thin side ribs, occasional burns on fingers, and a balancing act between letting the wood bend and hearing the fatal crack of a ruined side. I guess there are a few reasons for the regression: these two classical guitars have cutaways on the treble side (too complex and tight to use the Fox bender), and really just for the shear visceral feeling of bending and releasing, going almost to the limit of destruction, then letting the process happen. As we all strive to make the process faster, more production-friendly and more consistent to the millionth of an inch, it's easy to lose sight of some of the funner parts. Like staring up my nose in this picture. Let the ratio change continue.
