Official Luthiers Forum!

I have a nice set of beeswing Bubinga. Well, maybe not so nice. There are several tiny fissures and hairline cracks running perpendicular to (across) the grain. I tried flooding the cracks with CA and it soaked through to the other side. Probably a bad sign. Is it going to be possible to bend these sides or should I cut my losses and make head plates? As much as I would hate breaking it in the bender, it would be worse if those cracks erupted after the guitar was built. Thx for any and all advice.

Please post some pix.

Thanks

Doesn't sound promising unfortunately.

My answer isn't exclusive to Bubinga but to all species of wood. It really depends on the cracks. If we're talking a little bit of splintering on the edges, some of them may end up getting routed away with the binding or sanded away with the radius. It does seem a little bit odd that you would have hairline cracks perpendicular to the grain. It sounds like the wood was mishandled at some point. I have built one guitar out of Bubinga. For the most part, it was a joy to work with. It had some very moderate figure and wavy yet straight-ish grain, There was quite a bit of faceting after I bent it though. From what I've heard/read, this is common for the Bubinga as well as a number of other species. If the sides are still fairly wide you may be able to work around them by choosing an area with the least cracks. As for CA, I found that the purfling on that same guitar would only hold together when flooded with CA. Titebond would allow the purfling to fall apart in the bender. My point is that it is much more resistant to heat. You must have tight joints though.

In conclusion, you may already know the answer but just don't like it. Just look the pieces over and use your better judgement.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

_________________
"I'm not going to say that perfection has never been achieved. However, if it has, it probably went unnoticed due to it's lack of character."