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Here are a couple of pix taken by my student Rick Cowan (a member here, whose son did the documentary on me making guitars) of the new mod I made to my florentine cutaway mold. Rick has christened it The Hulk.

I used the same springs that I had on the upper bout of my Fox, and will soon mod all my molds to take the spring loaded arm on the upper bout bend as well. I figure I have about 60-70 lbs of tension on the slat. In the first pic, you can see in the background the test pieces taped together, some EI rw, one quartered - .105, the other flatsawn mostly, about .095 thick. I bent them without any supersoft (although another bud just brought me back a gallon from Detroit) and in about 3 minutes they were done. I used a 6x12-2.5 watt blanket, plugged straight in, no dimmer. Once the bend was done, pulled the plug. The real test was Ricks cutaway piece in madagascar rw, which I supersofted Sunday, and we bent last night - .075, and it came out like a charm - almost no springback, although during the day yesterday I reshaped the mold to overbend about a 1/4 inch. We used the blanket full blast at first, but then used a variac to trim it back to about 100v. Once the arm is fully down, you can see I added a chain to lock it to the bottom of the bench to cool in place. No welding was required to make the arm, its just 1 inch thick wall tube, some baltic birch ply, and some bolts, screws, and eye bolts.

Thank you John How for the wonderful mod !!!!

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

Perfect timing Tony!
I am getting set to start TWO, both with florentine cutaways!
Ill be rigging me up one of these for sure!

Thanks John and Tony!

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Right on Lance ...

Couple tips in the construction ...

The back end of the spring steel has a steel plate where the three hold down screws go thru it, at least 2 inch screws - you DONT want this baby letting loose ...
As well, I used a piece of thin rw to act as a spacer under the slat and steel plate to allow room for the wood and blanket back there - it also serves as a stop to set the wood in for the right alignment. You can see the pencil mark at the back end, and then a bit of extra space to allow some cutoff. The other end of the slat has a steel plate as well, with three huge rivets - where the S hooks and springs attach. The whole arm is apprx 30 inches long, about 8 inches wide inside, so I can fit it on my regular Fox for std molds too.

After the main bend portion of the mold, cut the wood away some to allow for the S hooks to sit back, allowing the slat to come straight off the mold (you can see this in the second pic) - The mold itself is solid ply glued up and sanded to shape, then attached to the baltic ply base with 8 big screws.

When we bent last night, Rick was moving/dropping the arm about an inch or so every 15-20 seconds. The result was dead flat, no ripples, and smooth - very sweet. After it cooled down, we popped it out.

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

Very nice Tony, I want to try doing a venetian cutaway one of these days. Currently I do it with the fox style attachment, but I plan on making something similar to yours and do the inside cutaway bend first working my way around the outer bend to the waist. We'll see, anyway, glad it worked for you. My inspiration came from, and credit goes to Bob Taylor.

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Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.