It’s been a few days since my last post. I actually worked on a few little odds and ends since the last post but nothing significant as I was wait
ing for my calipers to arrive so I could check the thickness of the strips I was trying to bend. It turned out that my previous attempts had been on strips that were 3mm to 4mm thick rather than the 1mm to 1.25mm that I expect to be bending for the real violin ribs. So, I planed one of the strips down a bit, to about 1.75mm and gave it another go. The bending went much more smoothly!
I made a couple of other changes in my bending process also. On the advice of many, from the internet, I heated my bending iron hot enough so that water didn’t just boil when it hit the iron but rather it beaded up and danced off the iron. But, you don’t want the iron so hot that it scorches the wood so make sure and let the iron heat up for a good bit of time and test on a scrap piece of wood for scorching.
The other significant, though simple, change I made was to use a piece of parchment paper between my aluminum bending strap and the wood strip I’m bending. This is done to protect the wood from being stained when it rubs against the aluminum.
As you can see in the picture and in the video, the results were good. When I was done, I thought the fit was probably close to good enough to glue. However, I discovered the next morning that either the curve had changed or the board had shrunk and it no longer fit tightly at both ends. Next time, when I get done bending the strip, I’m going to try clamping it into the c-bout on the form over night to see if that helps.
One thing I learned along the way was to NOT try to use carpet tape to hold the strips down while planing. I had read this recommendation on several forums but it didn’t work out well at all for me! When I got the strips down to a little over 1.5mm thick, I found that the adhesive on the tape was just too strong and the strips would break as I tried to remove them from the tape. Maybe there’s some brand that isn’t as permanent, but the standard double sided cloth carpet tape that I tried was a disaster… fortunately only on scrap wood!
Here’s today’s video. Enjoy!
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