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Can you guys point me towards a good tutorial on laminating double sided as well as point me towards a reasonable clamping jig design?

I have some extra-thin sides that I really want to use as double sides.

Thanks
John

I used vacuum to laminate the sides for the first time on my current project.

Materials:

- I made a solid form and used it inside this 2'x4' vacuum bag from Veneer Supplies, along with a breather layer.

- To glue, I used Unibond 800.

Procedural:

- I taped wax paper to the form,
- Wiped a thin layer of unibond on the gluing side of the inner layer with a foam brush,
- Then taped the pre-bent sides together to minimized movement.

- I slid the form into the bag, kicked on the vacuum, and let it sit under pressure. The shop was a cruel 106° that day, so an hour was plenty of time for the glue to set up. To make sure it had, I checked the leftover glue in the container I mixed it in. When it was solid, I took the form out of the vacuum bag.

- The side clung to the form when I took it out, but I taped the ends to the form and put a bag of pie weights on the waist overnight to give them a full 24 hour cure outside of the vacuum.

Tips:

Make sure you have everything laid out ready before mixing the glue. I moved fast, but only because I wasn't fumbling. I think it's a good idea to mark the sides very well before bending, i.e., "inner layer, glue side," and, "outer layer, glue side," to help you ensure you keep everything book matched.

This video might help. Might not. It's just something I did to share with friends on Facebook.

I'm also attaching another Facebook pic I put together when I laminated the cutaway.

I found that vacuum bagging applied insufficient pressure, especially at the waist. I went to a complicated jig with lots of bolts and hardware.

I have used a solid form with cauls and Unibond 800 very successfully. There is a lot of double side info on this forum via the search function.

You can bend both sides together. That helps a lot with the fit.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

JS Bogdanovich has a tutorial snippet on Youtube.

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Guitar Building = Continuous Improvement Process

I use cauls /clamps /forms, I have a vacuum clamp , but don/t like the noise of the compressor.Bog has excellent instructions in his book which I used .Many ways to do double sides!!

I found the Bogdanovich clip, and it's great. Is it part of a DVD?

His approach looks low-pressure and cost-effective if you already have the clamps. I had access to the vacuum, so that was a more cost effective approach for me, and the results were great. I chose Unibond after reading a number of threads on the forum, but Titebond is definitely less expensive and more accessible.

Thanks for mentioning this, guys. Looks like another great method.

Bogdanovich has a book and a downloadable video course. You can pick and choose videos for specific tasks if you don't want to buy all of them.