Violin Forum/Message Board

Dave Chandler · Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 8:41 pm Post subject: Bending

I've taken leather from an old wide belt and use that when bending. It can hold some moisture for you as well while bending, protect your fingers, and hold in a lot of heat to the wood. You need to scrape or sand away the stained outer bit of the leather.

The best solution, rather than designing cauls and wedges etc -- just keep bending it till you get it correct. Sometimes you may need to soak it in hot water, and then using a curling iron, press it into position and dry it out at the same time. the Curling iron doesn't get so hot it burns the wood, but boy it gets plenty hot.
_________________
Dave in the Blue Ridge
Southern Violin Association

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to the next with no loss of enthusiasm" Winston Churchill

"I took the road less travelled, and now I don't know where I am." Marco Polo

BK · Member Joined: 10 Apr 2011 Posts: 60

This may be extremely unorthodox (I don't know), but I found that bending the ribs directly on the mould seemed to work well. What I mean by that is, I'd actually put the damp ribs directly on the mould and then put the mould/ribs to the bending iron. That way the ribs took the exact shape of the mould, which cut out the middle men (aka, the metal belt). This may be a frowned upon practice, but it worked well for me for my first go at it.

amezcua, thanks for mentioning Hargrave. His articles look fascinating. I've got some reading to do. Smile

Dave Chandler · Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2011 5:38 pm Post subject:

Hey, if it works!!
_________________
Dave in the Blue Ridge
Southern Violin Association

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to the next with no loss of enthusiasm" Winston Churchill

"I took the road less travelled, and now I don't know where I am." Marco Polo

John Cadd · Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 8:32 pm Post subject:

BK Hargrave has some amazing insights about Guarnerius. He`s a real discovery . Another aspect of working the ribs is making sure which side is up and which is down.The relative angle of belly plate to back plate is in the Hargrave pages too. I made sure this time that all the edges of the corners are square to the belly plane. I never took too much notice before and some angles look a bit Italian as I mixed them up .