When people find out I am making a guitar, one of the most asked questions is, "How are you going to bend the sides?" Bending the wood for the sides of the guitar is one of the most daunting tasks. If not done with patience and some skill, the wood will split and break -   that can be a good bit of money right down the drain.

To bend the sides you need a bending iron.

A bending iron is basically a really hot piece of metal that you use to iron a piece of wet wood creating steam to loosen the fibers and allow it to bend without breaking.

Here you can see the iron in action.

You can buy a professional bending iron, but these cost about $200. Since I may never need one of these again (after I loose my mind trying to make this guitar), I researched and researched how to make one on the cheap. The solution that I decided to try was the cheapest of all, but I had real doubts that it would actually work. Here it is:

Yep. It's just a 150 Watt incandescent light bulb in a porcelain base inside a 6x3 inch aluminum tube (an extension for a car intake kit that I found on Amazon for $13). I just stuffed a little bit of aluminum foil in the top to keep the heat from venting out. I was so excited to try it, I just wired it up and sat the aluminum sleeve over the bulb to check the temp to see if it would get hot enough. Sure enough, it did and I was able to bend a test piece of wood surprisingly easily.

To finish this up properly I am going to attach all of the pieces to a piece of MDF that I can secure in my vise. I am also going to wire a basic dimmer switch in line to control the bulb intensity because running full blast the tube actually gets a little too hot. All said and done, this will wind up costing about $30. Far better than $200.

I first saw this idea in this video:

Here is a video of another master luthier bending sides by hand:

I could watch these guys do what they do all day.