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Originally Posted by Warmoth Website Curved lam top bodies are glued up by first putting them in vacuum bags. These bags then go in the autoclave tank where the pressure is elevated to 100 psi. |
Actually, this is quite a bit of overkill for most lam-tops. With this setup we can do tops as thick as .2"
We also steam and pre-bend (with a plain old steam iron) really hard woods like rosewood and bloodwood before they go in the tank.
While I was at Roberto-Venn, I did a 3/16" maple drop-top on a bass with no vacuum bag or pressure tank. I routed the underside of the top with parallel slots in the contour area. They went about halfway through and were cut with an 1/8" bit, stopping about 3/4" from the edges of the body. Then with a little water from a spray bottle on the top, the maple curled down to meet the contour on its own. About a million cam clamps later... voila! I bursted the edge of the body to obscure any small gaps, but on the whole it looked pretty good, as I recall.
The real trick here is to carve the contour on the body so that it only bends along one axis, if you know what I mean. You need to be able to hold a perpendicular straightedge flat at every point as you go down the curve or you'll never get the top to lay down properly.
