Sides and Bending Them

Once you have all your materials and a mold built to assist in building your guitar, you have a few options of what to do first. You could join and cut out the front or do the same for the back. You could start by working on the neck. Or you could start with the sides. I chose to start with the sides because I honestly thought that would be the most difficult part of building a guitar. I figured either I would be able to do it and the rest would be a breeze or I wouldn’t and I would just stop there without wasting any more time or money on it. To my surprise, bending the sides is not nearly as difficult as it first appears. As with most woodworking, a little bit of patience will get you a long way when it comes to building a guitar including bending the sides. But it is not that difficult.

There are several different ways you can go about bending the sides of a guitar.

1. Bending Machine – A bending machine is likely to be the easiest method of bending the sides of a guitar consistently. Unfortunately, it is also the most expensive. Additionally you would have to get different side molds for the bending machine every time you wanted to build a different size or style or guitar. But if you have enough money to buy one, you probably are not concerned with having to buy additional side plates for it. Luthiers Mercantile International sells bending machines like the one shown below.

 

                          

2. Heating Blankets – No, not the ones you put on your sore muscles. They make high temperature heating blankets that can be used to evenly heat up a full length side of a guitar to make it pliable so that it can be shaped to your guitar mold that you built. Once the wood reaches a certain temperature it is easily bent into shape, when the heat is removed, the wood will retain the shape of the mold.  Luthiers Mercantile International also sells these heating blankets.

                                          

3. Bending Iron – A bending iron is essentially a heated pipe that you manually work the wood against in the correct locations to bend the wood into the correct shape. This is probably by far the most difficult, but this is how I did mine and as I stated above it is really not as difficult as it seems. Below is a picture of a bending iron from Luthiers Mercantile Internation. But if you read on further, I think you can save some money like I did.

                                          

Now before you get too concerned with the prices of the above LMII’s products, there are plans on how to build bending machines as well as bending irons. A bending iron would obviously be the simplest choice to build on your own. You basically need a board, a pipe, a collar, nuts and bolts and a heat source. Some people have used electric heaters inserted into the pipe. Others have used blow torches. I personally opted for what I thought was the easiest and safest heat source that would reach the right temperatures. I use an electric heat gun. If you choose your pipe size wisely, the heat gun fits rather well. Below is a picture (and link) to a bending iron with plans that I found on the internet.

If you want to get a little fancier, you could try building the below side bender machine. If you click on the picture it will take you to the free plans that are available. If you are going to build many guitars and want them to be consistent, this may be the way to go.