Sheet Metal Art

How cool is my Dad - aka Gryper?!

One of the things we have to do while building the double bass is take these thin "sheets" of maple that we have planed to around 2mm thick, and bend them to form the sides of the double bass.

We have a bending iron which is a tool that is about 6 inches high and heats up, then you bend the sides around it shaping them to fit the sides of the double bass. The sides of the double bass are about 9 inches high.

So here is a picture of the bending iron.

Gryper did some sheet metal art and built us an extension for it so our bending iron is now 9" high. Despite his being frustrated and it having taken quite a few hours, it works incredibly well. Here is the bending iron with the new extension fitted.

Here's Bethany starting to bend the first piece of side rib.

We found that, as with everything we've done with this so far, it goes much easier with four hands than two.

Here is the mould and you can see the ribs have been glued in on the "C bouts" (the waist)

The first one took us well over an hour to get bent to fit exactly, the second one was bent and glued in in half an hour.

Once again, Gryper's sheet metal art saves the day.