Taking Shape
Alex Bishop attempts to charm some timber into shape with little more than heat, water and perseverance
I’ve mentioned before what a privilege it is to work with some of the rarest and most beautiful woods on the planet. Like many acoustic guitar makers, it fills me with gratitude to be able to set my hands working upon the smooth honey-coloured grain of cherry wood, or scrape ribbons of fine gossamer from the surface of a Macassar ebony guitar back.
As woodworkers, we can quickly intuit the useful properties of different woods as we work them with hand tools. Rosewood is dense and oily (great for hardwearing fingerboards and bridges) whereas Spanish cedar is feather-light but stiff (ideal for well-balanced necks). But we get even more intimate feedback from timber when we try to bend it into shape.
As anyone who has built their first guitar by hand will attest, feelings of wood appreciation can easily dissolve into palpable fear when faced with the prospect of coaxing an expensive tonewood into the guitar mould. There is significant jeopardy involved, given the possibility of wood splitting or even cracking under the pressure to conform to the undulating curves of a guitar.
There are many factors at play, but the thickness of the wood is a key starting point to problem-free side bending. Too thick and the workpiece will stubbornly resist bending at all, but too thin and the resulting instrument will end up too delicate for practical use. A prescribed thickness would be helpful, but then all types of wood respond differently to bending and optimise within a range of thicknesses. Ebony, for example, has a remarkable memory and will spring back much more than something like walnut, which will follow your direction all too readily, like an overenthusiastic dog chasing an imaginary stick.
A controlled source of heat and moisture is critical, too: I use a bending iron designed for this very purpose. It is a column of metal with a cross-section resembling an aeroplane wing, with a thermostatically controlled heating element inside. It gets easily hot enough to fry an egg on top, so a generous spritz of water is required to not only help avoid charring the wood but also to
“Feelings of wood appreciation can dissolve into palpable fear when faced with the prospect of coaxing an expensive tonewood into the mould”
percolate through the wood fibres in the form of steam. This allows the fibres to stretch and twist according to the way the guitar side is pressed and pulled against the curve of the iron. The resulting shape must follow the outline of my template perfectly to avoid unnecessary stress in the joins to the front and back. Once cooled, the guitar sides must relax into the desired shape, dropping perfectly into the mould without putting up a fight – or, at least, that’s the theory.
Stop & Smell The Rosewood
Bending the sides in this way highlights another other aspect of the timber: the aroma. Visitors will invariably comment on the (normally) favourable smell of my workshop if I have spent the morning bending wood in this way. Steaming rosewood, for example, gives rise to the sweet floral fragrance that provides us with its name. Yellow cedar produces a delicious aroma that reminds me of my grandma’s apple crumble. Not all tonewoods, however, are a treat for the nostrils – steamed bubinga is not unlike the odour of a forgotten pet hamster’s cage.
As the wood is pulled and stretched, a guitar outline begins to emerge. It might be missing some crucial parts, but I feel a satisfaction in seeing the project quite literally taking shape. My hand runs across the sides to check for flaws and inconsistencies and I realise that the direct physical contact between my hands and the timber is, to me, a vital part of building musical instruments. As a species, we grasped wood in our hands before we even descended to walk on the ground. We made offerings of wood to the fire as the first communities began to emerge. We made music even as we learned to speak. Given the burdensome trappings of life in the modern age, I’m pleased that guitar making – in its own way – maintains that connection to my primal roots.