Bending thickness

[Dave Bagwill]

What do you think would be the max thickness for bending binding on a hot pipe?
I've got some .120 cherry that I'd like to use.

[John Parchem]

I generally bend .080" or .090". I never like to go thicker than my sides which are .080". Maybe .120 can bend to a non venetian cutaway guitar.

[Herman]

My sides and binding are always around 0.080".
For the cutaway of my next gypsy guitar I go on the cutaway to .060". Yeahh.
FWIW.
Herman

[Will Reyer]

I bend waist bends of single guitar sides as well as bindings sets taped together on a hot pipe and then do the other bends on my crude version of a Fox bender.

My hot pipe is a 3” diameter piece of car exhaust pipe that gives me the 1-1/2” radius I need for that bend, and has a $10 electric charcoal lighter loop stuffed inside to provide the heat after condensing it a little bit in the vise on my welding bench to make it insert. I put a doubled up wet dishrag on top of the hot pipe, and spritz the bending area of the wood as the heat drives the moisture out.

I try to make my sides .085”, mas o menos, before scraping and sanding, and my bindings at .100” as I mostly make minimalist guitars and skip the purfling. I like the thickness because on an earlier build I made a knife edge on the binding which was painful to throw my arm over and with the thickness I can sand a useful radius on the outside edge of the bindings without being into the soundboard or back. I also aim for backs at .085” thick.

On my #6 build, however, I took Dave Bagwell's excellent advise and made purfling and bindings thinner so they would both share the .100” deep binding rabbets, and then glued them with thin superglue. That worked fine but some of the bindings were thin in places when I got them flush with the sides.

Normally I just Titebond the .100” thick bindings to the bodies in multiple clamping sets as they're way too thick to tape or rubber band (photo, #7, in progress).

I've got a guy here who wants me to make him a cutaway guitar, and that will be the next build after the current one, #7, gets completed. I think I can maybe make the bass side a little thinner and do the two side bends in the upper bout with the same 1-1/2” radius as the waist bend, for a Venetian cutaway. I am, however, still puzzling about making the binding bends, though I think if I know the distance between bends I can duplicate the form.

I'm also just building OM size guitars, but would like to start making parlor and dreadnoughts though I think I can still use the same waist bending radius.

I do admire that old “slash”style top border marquetry like some vintage Martins, had, though
(see: https://umgf.com/30-style-purfling-t138 ... l#p1667966) but I expect it might be an order of magnitude above my abilities even if it did improve the sound.