Official Luthiers Forum!

I'm in the development process of building an automated side bender as my old Fox is pretty ragged, going on 20 years and I love building machines. I've talked with Brad Way about it a little and I've of course seen the Taylor ones. I've come across this http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Divisions/G ... ry%20Tour/ look at picture 7. I wondering if anyone has any insight to why Taylor didn't go with this design, seems much simpler. I can also see the potential for cracking sides with the Gibson way, so it may be as simple as that. The Gibson way is more of a heated press and Taylor's is more of, "let's ease into the bending and go slow to assure perfection".

I haven't decided which way I'm going to go buy have enough materials for both. Mine will be microprocessor control and variables will be able to be changed, heat, speed, cook time. I want to make it as compact and efficient as possible. Mine will have preset buttons and an LCD screen to make adjustment in the presets. It will bend 1 set of sides at a time and do the entire operation without user input. Meaning, you place the sides in, line them up and press a button, then the machine will bend the waist, then move to bend the rest including one piece will get the cutaway bent in to it if that's the mold you have in it. Oh, the molds will be able to be changed, hopefully quickly but I haven't got that far.

Taylor's system does only inside bends and keeps the sides between two high-tension slats so the sides are heated directly at the point of bending and are completely supported on both sides. The Gibson-style benders are last generation; Taylor used to use similar ones, and still did for cutaways when they first built the new ones.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Based on some of the testing that I did when I built my bender I found the Taylor principles work very well. One of the things I learned from researching bending wood is heat affects the ability for wood to compress. This being said then it makes sense to apply the heat to the inside of the bend where the wood is under compression when being bent. Since the outside of a bend is in tension and wants to "snap" or blow out it makes sense to apply the pressure from a tensioned steel slat similar to what Taylor uses.

I am sure the Gibson heat press method works well but I am guessing it would be easier to crack a side. Like any process I am sure once you get it figured out either process will work I just think the Taylor process is more refined.

Good luck!
Brad

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Brad
Avon, OH