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This weekend, I am cutting the back and sides for my first serious acoustic build, out of a black walnut board 8 1/'2" wide by 2 1/4" thick, probably 10' long.

Thing is , this board is totally flatsawn, and I am just wondering how the wood will behave when I bend the sides. The bending for this build will be done manually, with a bending iron. The Fox bender will come later ...

Either I deep cut them, and bend them as flatsawn, or else I could, at a pinch, make each side quartersawn by laminating two 2/1/4" lengths together (probably with fish glue) to make up a 4 1/2" wide side. I am assuming that the fish glue would withstand the subsequent heat from the bending process, but would it in fact be worth the effort?

Will the flatsawn sides bend satisfactorily ? Should I make them thinner, or thicker than the standard .080" ?

The back, I am totally happy with, it will have a lovely figure ...and also, the neck ( from the same board) will be perfectly quartersawn.

You shouldn't have any problems. Walnut is about as easy to bend as it gets. I bent some flatsawn black walnut with cutaway (on a hot pipe) late last summer, got the rim together and lining installed then had to be without a workshop for a while. The rim is patiently waiting for me to get back to it and shows no sign of trouble despite being without a top, back or mold.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

It should bend ok providing there isn't any bad run-out. Walnut is easy to work with.

Hmm. Maybe it's just me, but the one time I tried to bend flatsawn black walnut, it came out looking like a potato chip... Totally unusable.

Maybe I should try again. Do you guys bend wet, dry, or slightly moist?

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Phillip Patton

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I bend walnut slightly moist--just a spritz or two from a plant mister. If too much water stands on the surface, I immediately shake it off on the floor. Then immediately to the pipe.
Yes, it occasionally curls a bit at the edges, but nothing like a potato chip. And I don't use full-depth molds. If I did, I probably wouldn't see much curl at all.

Just an idea but how about laminate sides? Use 2 thin flat sawn pieces about 1mm or so each and you probably won't even need to use a bending iron. Just clamp up with glue in a mold. That is if you can cut slices that thin off the block...

Flat sawn will have a tendency for potato chipping . You can always try it but you may not get a flat side.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
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You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

I've bent 4 sets flat sawn black walnut sides some on a pipe and some on a bender. There is only 1 set I am happy with as all the rest are all potatoe crisped (I quess that would be the UK english adjective) and I'm not even going to bother trying to use them.
Maybe my mistake was soaking them in water. It's a shame because I really like the look of them.
I have found that the ring tone from Black Walnut pretty dull. I haven't finished a build with it yet but so far I'm not impressed, I quess that's why it's cheap.

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We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at guitars.

I will give it a go and see what happens. If they buckle, well, it's all good experience and I can always get another board which is nearer quarter sawn. I will get a heating blanket one day, but I would really like to do this first build the old-fashiooned way.

The double sides is an interesting idea, but I don't have a thicknessing sander, so taking the sides down to 1mm thckness isn't feasible, for me. I don't think my Wagner Safe-T Planer (which I will be using for the first time on this project), would be able to handle a thickness of 1mm.

I bend it with just a spritz of water, plenty of heat and patience.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Murray, you're probably correct about going that thin with your SafTPlaner, but you can easily get into a bendable thickness with it and finish up with a card scraper. You probably already knew that, but I think it's often useful to point these things out for the benefit of people who are lurking and reading and trying to figure these things out.

Let us know how it goes.
Patrick

Murray one does not need a thickness sander .Here in the usa woodcrat sells walnut veneer at.6mm or .022 that can be used for a double sided gtr

I really do appreciate the advice given so far.

@Patrick, yes, I will be taking the sides down with the Safe-T- Planer and finishing with a card scraper, and whatever happens I will post pics of the results, warts and all...

This guitar will be for my own use, so even if there are a few questionably bent areas, I will still use the sides, unless they come out as a total disaster.

I am not intuitively sure about using multiple glued up veneer as side material, I can see that technically it is possible, and in a production environment it could make a deal of sense, time-wise, if you were well jigged up, but does any builder actually make up their sides like this ? I mean, out of veneer ? I know that several builders do laminate their sides for maximum stiffness, but I don't think they use commercially bought veneer.

I know that current thinking is that the sides act as rigid separators between the top and the back, and have no contribution to the tone, and that may well be true, but something inside me says that the sides vibrate as well, and that solid timber is going to vibrate more than laminated timber.

But hey, it's my first build, I'll probably screw it up anyway ...

Walnut bends very nicely, even dry, so use less water, more heat, and you'll minimize any tendency to cup. DO NOT SOAK. Just a light spritz, at most. And don't be bullshitting with the heat; get 'er plenty hot.

anybody have any tips how to make the potatoe crisps into pancakes?

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We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at guitars.