Official Luthiers Forum!

Well those of us that have bent Zootman's wonderful MAP-O-LAM in the past know that when bending it in the face up profile the curly maple wants to twist out of plane. I have dealt with this by tightly sandwiching the MAP-O-LAM between two pieces of binding and tape securely with low tack masking tape prior to bending in a fox style bender.

Well this week I wanted to bend a full circle of MAP-O-LAM to a 5 ¾ diameter for a rosette. So I knew this would have to be done by hand on a hot pipe. Well it took some time and as expected it did twist from the curl in the maple as bending. I would correct the twist as best I could while bending but was still left with a bit once complete.

I fixed it but first taping the overlapping ends of the circle to gather to prevent spring back. Then placed a slat, heating blanket, then slat on my bench. On top of that I place the slightly warped circle. On top of that I lightly clamped a ½” thick scrap piece of MDF. I brought the blanket up to 200F the slowly increased the clamping pressure till the MAP-O-LAM laid flat and let it cook for 5 min. I allowed it to cool for 2 hours and removed it and installed in the rosette.



Now I am goint to attempt to bend it to 4 1/2" diameter full circle and replace the inner purfling on this rosette as well

Nicely done MDP! I too found that the M-O-L twisting was a problem.

I found that using the flat area of my bending iron - I could press the map-o-lam against it and flatten it out. I actually ended up using the flat area of my iron to even do the bends - slowly.

I really like your idea for use on a rosette.

I will consider it for a build!

_________________
P A U L B U R N E R
Burner Guitars

OK - I guess I'm displaying my ignorance, but what on earth is MAP-O-LAM? A Google search yielded nothing even remotely related to guitar-building or luthiery, so what is it, what is is used for, and where can one get it if one is inclined to use it?

--Steve

_________________
---Steve

RCtonewood makes them. they are a pre laminated purfling made up of thin line bwb-1/16 wide curly maple-thin line bwb intended gor body edge purfling. See the outer part of the rosette in this picture