bending wood

Bending wood was starting to seem almost impossible until I found the easy answer!
I was even all set to try and build a bending jig, complete with dangerous hot pipe and all. Then I thought I would try using a hair curling iron (a suggestion I found online) and in trying it I realized the curling iron wasn't doing much, but the wood was bending just because you could force it to. That's because I had picked a really bendy wood - pine lath from the home improvement store. If you get it good and wet - spray it down for a couple of hours or soak it overnight - you can bend it by hand. You have to be careful not to force it too much or the grain may separate on top. But you can get some nice gentle curves without fancy equipment, in keeping with the microluthery philosophy.
So the secret is picking wood that really wants to cooperate. I wouldn't try this with poplar, for instance.
Then you have to let it dry with the curve in place. You can tie the ends together with string - this works well with teardrop shapes - or you can make a simple bending jig to dry it on (see next post).

two string open back fretless lute with pentatonic fret markings

Pine back and sides, oak tuners, and purple poplar neck. The fret markings are cut into the side of the neck. Nylon fishing line strings tuned to d and a. You can see the screws holding the neck in place.

moon lute v.4

This is another moon lute attempt - this one designed more after the dan nguyet, with a long neck and really high frets. You can see that I reused the body from version 2. The pegs are actually friction pegs, and with the fairly low string tension they work pretty well even though they aren't tapered. The strings are 50# and 30# monofilament fishing line. You can bend the strings by pressing down on them, especially the lower notes where there is more slack. It's actually pretty fun to play.

It's pentatonically fretted and I started to miss the other notes and didn't want to have to bend up to them, so I decided to make another fretless instrument.

moon lute v.2

This was my second attempt at a homebrew moon lute/yueqin/gekkin. Version 1 was a rectangular one-piece, also with raised frets. It was actually kind of cool with a banjo-ey sound. The neck was a little too wide, though. Also, the tuners were held in with screws that drove me nuts. I recycled the body into another instrument.