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[/hide]I discovered this product while researching wood veneer and found info on it at http://www.veneersupplies.com.
The manufacturer claims "We have heard of good results from luthiers who use the softener to make some species of thin lumber more bendable."

Look at the attached photo. This is the caption that goes with it from the manufacturer:

How soft does it really make the veneer?
I took the picture shown here to give you an idea as to how well Super-Soft 2 works. This image shows madrone burl veneer rolled around a pencil. There are no cracks or splits. If I can roll a burl veneer this tight, you can probably imagine the possibilities with complex veneering projects!

I've been having a real challenge bending some flame Maple sides and have already cracked one set.

Now I'm wondering if this product might be the answer for bending highly figured wood. Perhaps it could even eliminate the need for heat blankets, bending irons, etc.

Has anyone used this product?

I'd love to hear about your results.

I've used it successfully several times on smaller parts, but have not done much with it on sides as yet. It does work well, but I'm still getting calibrated before I try it out on bigger and more expensive stuff. So far the thing that has worked best for me is to wet the wood down and bag it in a plastic bag for a couple of hours before bending. I've also found it useful on very figured wood to glue paper on the surfaces before bending to help avoid surface checks. I've got some really fancy stock that would be hard to replace, and I want to be sure it's going to go OK before I try it. I did bend some very highly figured Morado for bindings and a recurve bevel cutaway a while back, and they went without a hitch.

Alan,

Thanks for the quick reply.

When you glue paper to the wood and bend it what do you do to remove the paper and glue once the wood is bent?

I am also experimenting with it. One thing I discovered is that you should let the wood dry out before you bend it. If you bend when the wood is still wet with Super-Soft it can discolor the wood. I place the wet wood between sheets of newspaper and weight it down overnight before bending, just as described in the directions on the back.

I'll give you my beginner's experience....

First, I have some experience building furniture as a hobby and have flattened veneers using a couple different brands of softener. SSII does seem to work better than the other veneer softeners I've used.

Second, for my first guitar build I had a lot of trouble bending the curly mahogany bindings (with purfled edge). I ordered the SSII to see if it would help, and I think it made a minor difference. Reducing the binding thickness from 90/1000 to 70/1000" provided a much larger improvement. I still have a problem with the binding purfling buckling at the tightest spot in the bend which has not been solved (see picture below which was one of my first failed attempts. My recent attempts are much better but not perfect).

One good experience I had with SSII was when I hot bent a binding close to the desired shape but had a flat spot at the tightest part of the cutaway bend. I wet the binding down with SSII and clamped it into a form. The SSII seemed to soften the binding enough to let it flow to the final shape, and once the effects of the SSII wore off, the binding held that shape, removing the flat spot.

I played around ("practised") bending a number of test pieces, and I found that getting the moisture input, heat input, bend speed, and binding thickness all right is pretty tricky. I'm sure the SSII helps, but you have to get everything else right also - the SSII is no magic potion.

My practice confirmed what everyone says about figured maple - that it should be bent pretty dry. My "beginner's inexperienced" worry is that the SSII might introduce too much moisture to the wood and might actually be detrimental to bending figured maple. I tried bending wood that had been soaked in SSII while wrapped in plastic, so the wood remained wet for hours. I also tried bending wood that was soaked in SSII and left unwrapped so that it dried out. I couldn't notice a difference except for figured maple that definely liked to be dry. The SSII also produces a stinky glycol smoke when hot bending that I don't like.

I'm interested. The following is a 'bit out there'.

I have a pile of flitched veneers that were trashpicked from a high-end custom furniture maker (Have you ever seen a $25k coffeetable or a full-scale preinstallation fit-up of a $60k walk-in clothes closet? Just 'wow'). They are offcut flitches that are 0.020" thick, and I've been experimenting with laminating them into sides and backplates using hot hide glue. I'd like to use hot hide glue for its traditional and practical properties for the making of an instrument. A lot of the veneer is 'crispy'. I haven't done much, but I've found it necessary to soak them for a while. I've thought about sizing/soaking them in a dilute solution of hide glue. Weird, I know, but I think that there's nothing to lose. The guy that showed me around the shop and gave the offcuts to me was using them for kindling in his fireplace.

I've used the SuperSoft II on sides and bindings - helps quite a bit, I think. Definitely let it dry before you bend.

I find that when the side purflings buckle it sometimes helps to press that edge of the binding down on the flat top of my bending iron, using something like a flat piece of wood to apply pressure. This bends the buckles out to some extent, and softens the glue. Then press it down on a flat piece of cool wood or metal until the glue hardens up again.

Another way to accomplish Alan's suggestion is to press the tight curve with a clothes iron. I have one I bought at Goodwill for $3.00 that works great for shop stuff, and saves me the grief of using my wife's iron.

Indeed, old salts would soak oak framing stock in anti-freeze before bending it into a boat hull. On such thin stock, I'd worry about the woods little cells being damaged and decreased strength in the sides.

I have used it a couple times on bindings and one set of curly maple sides. following the advice I got about using it for lutherie, I wet the wood down and let it set for about 24 hours. By that time the wood is not wet but the the SSII has had a chance to soak through the thickness of the wood. I am pretty sure fairy dust is one of the ingredients. I'm not saying you don't have to be careful but it made the curly maple sides bend more like black walnut.

It is my understanding that the heat from bending will boil off the SSII by the time you are done so if you need to rebend, you will need to re-apply. Keeping in mind that the intended use is for veneers much thinner than guitar sides, I would guess that people who are having less success with it are not allowing enough time for it to permeate the entire thickness.

Well thanks to all of you that have repsonded so far.

I am definitely going to get some and do some testing with it. It sounds like it could be a useful product.

Since I already have some cracked sides to test with I think I'll try using these for test pieces. Perhaps introduce some variables such as: wood thickness, soak time, temperature, etc., and come up with some useful data.

Will keep you posted when that happens.

Never heard of this - thanks for the info. I'd like to give it a try.

just tried the stuff for the first time today. didn't even use it right, but still worked great. Made bending a venitian cutaway a cinch. (and it was my first try at a cutaway.) also used it for rosette purflings and they went right in very easily. Will definitely be using this stuff all the time now.

I just realized I left a question un-answered. When I glue paper to wood to help reduce split outs, I just scrape it off afterward.

Alan Carruth wrote:I just realized I left a question un-answered. When I glue paper to wood to help reduce split outs, I just scrape it off afterward.

Neat trick to glue paper for support. Thanks for another one Alan. I have used SS2 on the last 3 sets of sides I've bent and one thing I think it helps is cross grain ripples. May just be my imagination or luck of the draw with such a low sample.
Tom

Lots of people use Supersoft II (SS2) to bend highly figured guitar sides and binding. I've used it a little.

I have very limited experience as a guitar builder, so what I say may be a bit Supersoft.

I used SS2 to bend curly maple binding that had snapped w/o it, using a pipe bender. When I painted Supersoft on the wood, let it dry for 24 hours, and tried bending it again, it didn't break. I did not sandwich newspaper with it--I would think that would be more necessary with crack-prone, wrinkled burl veneer. YMMV.

It is said that the effect is temporary and this was my experience. When I waited to start bending 48 hours after painting on the SS2, my maple binding once again began to break. I think all the SS2 evaporates from the wood in a couple of days. I had no trouble gluing the binding on and it still seems normal 4-5 years later.

When I used SS2 on curly maple binding, with blue/black/blue side purfling already glued on it, the blue dye did not migrate into the maple during my initial test. So I bent all the binding and in about 1/3 of the strips the blue dye leaked out and stained the maple. : p

A softener is not needed with EI rosewood, but I recently bent some EIR sides and thought I'd try it--might help, won't hurt, I thought. I painted it on , let the wood dry for 24 hours. Slight problem: during the bending, some EIR-colored stuff leaked out of the wood and made a minor mess in the bender. It was easily cleaned up, but was a warning about using SS2 with wood prone to leak color.

Many woods will "leak color" and especially resinous woods like the rosewoods. It's more or less normal and probably has nothing to do with the softener.