Home made Fox Style Bender

[Bryan Bear]

How thick was the side in the cutaway area?

[John Kingma]

I don't know for sure... but after the fact it just "looked" thicker than it should be. My son did the thicknessing. I told him to shoot for 2mm but I never checked when he was done.

[Bryan Bear]

It looks a little thick in the picture too but it is hard to tell from pictures. . .

[Gordon Bellerose]

That looks like it is working well, John.
I built one this year also, but haven't tried it yet.
I'm excited to get going.

[Bob Hammond]

Looks good! Is there any heat from below? How thick was the cherry- ~1/8"? Was it kiln-dried or air-dried?

[John Kingma]

No heat from below... only from the heat blanket, which sits directly on top of the wood..

The cherry is 2mm thick, and it's kiln dried.

[Greg Martin]

Dj Parker. I would love to see more pics,both cutaway and non cutaway side. I think your design is perfect for my type of building. can you post more or pm me pics thanks.

[Greg Martin]

Ive been going back and forth on this,to build a fox style bender or not. I just cant see spending the money on a heat blanket ,spring steel and timers and screws just to use it on one or 2 sets per year.could this design work with a series of ligt bulbs? Its a very cool fixture but I imagine youd have 200 bucks in it and many hours to build and tweak it. I might build a version with the old school light bulbs, im just not convinced---yet.

[Barry Daniels]

You won't be convinced until you actually build it and use it. There is a really good reason why the majority of builders use a Fox bender and a heat blanket.

[Randy Roberts]

The discovery of the heating blanket ranks right up there with the discovery of Novacaine.

No, you don't really need it to get the job done, but...

[Waddy Thomson]

Go for the simplified version, ala Mario Proulx. Just a form, slats, blanket, wood and a few cauls. No need for a big old machine! Blanket can be on top or on bottom depending on the form size. My sandwich is, from bottom to top: slat, foil, wet Kraft paper, wood, wet Kraft paper, foil, blanket, slat. I do not wet the wood. Only the paper. The foil does not wrap around the wood, it's in strips so the steam can escape.

[Michael Lewis]

The half body forms are great for the regular (non cutaway) sides but the Fox style bender or a hot pipe or similar heated "iron" are needed to bend the cutaway.

I put the blanket on the inside surface so any scorching that may occur is not on the surface that will show.

[Waddy Thomson]

I realize that a cutaway would require a special form. However, if you use the foil and Kraft paper, there is no scorching! Also no staining of the slats or blanket.

[Michael Lewis]

That's encouraging, Waddy.

[John Kingma]

Well as a bit of an update...

I've done a lot of "test" bends and have done some tweaking to the bender. I've also bent my first real set of sides and have an actual guitar started. A lot of other things have come up so it's currently on the backburner... but I'm hoping to get going with it again after Christmas.

Anyway, this bender has been a bit of an experiment. It's overkill in some ways and lacking in others. It's been time consuming to build and tweak and some of the components I've bought have been a bit pricey... BUT even if I only bend one set of sides per year, I'm glad I did this. If nothing else it will give me some consistency in what I do.