Dear Ken, How wonderfull is to see you sharing all this knowledge, with this kind generosity as precious as your smile ! I thank you so much. Cheers from France
I also learned of this channel through Crimson Guitars and subscribed immediately. I've been saying for years that Ken Parker is the Stardivari of our time when it comes to innovation and craftsmanship. His ideas and developments are where I learned to never be afraid to experiment. I've watched all the videos so far and look forward to more.
Thanks, Nick! The linen is really pleasant to work with, and seems to have just the right amount of strength and stretch to work perfectly. You could use other adhesives, but because I also use this epoxy resin as the first coat of my finish, it's a no brainer for me. This way, and little bit of adhesive left in the wood blends perfectly, and becomes part of the finish. Of course, it's a cinch to peel off the linen when you overheat the epoxy with an iron . All in all a fantastic help! The neck process is coming, but wow, what a lot of special tools, and a big bag of tricks.
Thanks Ken I was having trouble finding a source! I am ordering now. I just started sizing my wood with a hand plane so by the time it gets here I should be done planing! Thanks again, Pat
I'm just stumbling onto this idea -- what's a good source? I've been looking around and having a hard time finding .009 (and I'm not sure how sensitive the process is to the thickness of the linen). Thanks!
Here's a good place to shop for this linen, www.onlinefabricstore.com/product-group-linen.aspx?product=handkerchief-linen I believe that "handkerchief" linen is likely the thinnest style, and it works fine for this use.
Dear Ken, Thank you for making available your videos on archtop construction- they are wonderful, well filmed, and I am really enjoying learning about your process. I hope I'm not bothering you with a question. I recently watched the 4 video series on your side bending process, and was wondering what you do about the epoxy resin that is left on the sides after bending. I saw that you remove the patch of linen with the clothes iron, but - and forgive me if this is covered in a later video that I have yet to see- you make no mention of what you do about the residual epoxy on the sides. Thanks again.
Ah, perhaps I did forget to mention this! This is crucially important to know, as many of us have had the heartbreak of only noticing some such problem after the finish has been applied. By using the same material for the primer coat, we drive around this problem. The epoxy residue from the side reinforcement patches, whether we remove them or not ( I have done it both ways) is cleaned up with scraper and sandpaper, but, of course, some will remain in the side material, and this would be a terrible problem, except that the first coat of my finish is the exact same epoxy, and so the issue is resolved automatically, and just isn't a concern!
Awesome as always Ken! I have applied your linen trick (on typically difficult fragile flame maple .075) and, believe it or not, used titebond (not epoxy). and it still worked (I thought it would melt on the bend - behold it didn't!). I apply a similar tape trick to a (alternative) veneer/flax/epoxy lamination (no heat) clamped under vacuum (plastic/duct tapefrom Home Depot) and leave overnight. The 3M tape (white from Depot) comes right off and leaves an otherwise difficult bend intact. (Even veneer the thickness of a business card can gives some trouble) Doing it wrong but it works! ;) Thanks for letting us all geek out on your videos!
Excellent report! There's lots of ways to apply this "temporary tape'' reinforcing idea, as you suggest. The reason I like epoxy for this job is that I use the same epoxy resin as a primer coat, and so there is no worry about cleaning off every trace of a "foreign" adhesive, as any leftover resin from the "temporary tape" removal just becomes a homeboy part of the finish. If it works, then you must didn't do it wrong, now, didja? I dig your work, TogaMan!
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 oh, yes, I have even French Polished epoxy 😂. Lately though I’ve been applying vacuum infusion to veneer arch top sandwich balsa flax cf. (so the infused epoxy veneer is sand polishable). Eye candy with benefits and won’t crack like spruce does in extreme dry. I gave up the humidor fight….
Looks like a lot of us are Crimson Guitars fans! Found out about the channel through Ben as well and have been binging on all your videos today! Amazing to see the work that goes into your guitars!
I like your Wetzler clamps, I acquired quite a collection of them when I was building custom furniture in the 1980s. And of course, your videos are wonderful!
Thank you for these videos, they are fantastic! I really like your side molds and would love to know if they are designed to have the thickness of the side, straps and blankets in mind? Meaning, do the two parts of the mold fit perfectly together without anything in there or is there a gap designed into them? Again, thanks for sharing your knowledge. 🕉
Excellent question. What you refer to, "designing a gap into them" is called an offset. If you are clamping/laminating a flat panel, all you need are two flat plates to apply pressure and control the surfaces. So, in the 2D world, offset isn't an issue. When you leave the world of flat planes, everything changes in some interesting ways. To get the tool surfaces to control the bent side as I'm showing, these two tool components need to be cut so as to leave room for the side, 2 rubber heat blankets and the 2 stainless steel shims. To do a good job, these tools need to be quite accurate. Assuming we start with a hard outline pattern of your guitar shape, my cheap and cheerful way to mark the correct size offsets is this... Glue up plywood or particleboard sheets to the required thickness for your sides. In my experience, particleboard, although kinda disgusting, is the better choice, as it starts out pretty flat, plus its homogeneity compared to a stack of plywood makes it so much easier to follow a line precisely on the bandsaw. If you tune up your saw and fit a sharp 1/4" blade, you'll have a good chance of cutting so well that cleanup will be trivial. That's the goal. If the top surface is rough or funny texture/color that makes it hard to see your pen mark, consider gluing on a piece of smooth paper to get a proper surface for the pen. Using the correct size flat washer, ua-cam.com/video/Moe5IBhwX7Q/v-deo.html follow your guitar outline pattern and mark the outer part of the tool with a pen so as to expand the outline by the amount of one heat blanket plus one Stainless Steel shim's combined thickness. "The correct size flatwasher" is judged by the difference between the outside and inside diameters, this is what we care about. Within reason, the diameter of the washer doesn't matter. Two solutions to the problem of finding the right size washer are .. 1) Look through your giant box of odd washers you've been keeping for the last %#^$ years, or 2) Chuck up a bar of metal or plastic in your lathe, and make the correct part (easy). Saw and clean up these surfaces with sanding blocks or your spindle sander, accuracy counts. Now you use this outside tool to mark the inside part of the tool with another washer, this one sized to offset the whole stack of 2 heat blankets, 2 SS shims, and one guitar side. It seems like this would be a good thing to demo, so we'll put it on the list, thanks!
Thanks a lot ken for all your sharing. I fold the sides in aluminium foil to conserve water, but I don't find glue that supports hot bending, to do that. What is this glue ?
Found my way here via the GAL article, and man, is it ever worth the search! I'm almost ready to take the plunge and try an archtop, since I don't play the flattop I built.
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 On a more serious note: Thank you for producing these videos. Ervin Somogyi mixes his epoxy with chopsticks chucked into a power drill... we had a running joke over there that this trick alone was worth the price of admission as an apprentice. These videos are full of gems and I don't even have to do your laundry for three years; thanks! ;-)
I have done sides several ways, and this one is the most direct, with simple methods and tooling. I'm currently using a much more complex method, but chose to show the universal style that I thought the most of you would benefit from.I did it this way for over a decade, with many guitars.
You did, but it's easy to miss, I should have called it out at the start. The sides are sawn and finely sanded to .055" - .060", or 1.5mm before bending, but are so well behaved that they need only a tiny bit of sanding with 320 and 800 to be ready for finish. I feel this is just right for the size instrument I make. There are different opinions on this, of course, but I want the sides to be compliant, as I think it frees the plates to vibrate better.
Hey Ken, I'm wondering what your thoughts are around the idea that the rim, which supports the top plate, should be maximum stiffness (like a banjo). To that end I know some luthiers use a multi-ply, usually three, for sides. I have a hybrid nylon string that employs this technique and it's a canon! The construction is still very light weight. Obviously more work.
There's a lot to say about your question, and I promise we'll get around to this in detail sometime. There seem to be at least two schools of thought here, with some builders favoring thin, one piece sides, (inspired by 100 year old Martin mahogany guitars?) and others going for the brick outhouse format with multiple epoxy bonded laminates and even solid wood cores with laminates on both sides. Both can be successful, it seems to me. I like sides to be compliant and light, so that's one end of the spectrum, but lots of fine builders are getting great results with very stiff laminates, so what do I know? The mad scientists in the classical guitar world were the first to go this way, i believe, with steel string builders following suit. If you haven't looked lately, there's a lot of interesting newish design thinking in the classical guitar world in search of an expanded dynamic range (AKA Louder!) the embodiments of which have caught on with professional players.
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440"If you haven't looked lately, there's a lot of interesting newish design thinking in the classical guitar world in search of an expanded dynamic range (AKA Louder!) the embodiments of which have caught on with professional players." Yes like the double top thing of which I've seen done different ways including the use of Nomex which is a material borrowed from the aerospace industry I believe. The goal of course is to produce a very light weight, high modulus plate. Can't wait to hear your thoughts on this in an upcoming video. Really enjoying the series.
That linen trick is so cool. Never seen that before. I broke several sides on a tight cutaway guitar recently and managed to achieve it in the end using OBrien guitars technique of a steam box I built to steam the side for 15mins before bending. It worked reliably repeatedly but I’m sure on some woods it would cause them to ripple badly. I will try your method on the next one. I’ve got some zpoxy so hopefully that’ll work as well. Thanks for the videos.
Cool to hear from you. Steam plasticizes the wood, but without discipline, the wood can really distend and get into all kinds of unwanted wiggles. This is where the pinch mold really shines, it leaves the wood no choice but to resolve and dry in the correct shape.
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 yes ken. You method other than the cloth is similar to the Fox bender I built myself only I feel your pinch mould is probably slightly more accurate and less chance the wood could ripple. How long do you keep the heating blanket on for when it goes in the mould?
Hi Ken, So I've now watched through this series and I understand the concepts of reinforcing the side under tension and the calculation of how thickness affects stiffness. What I'm not sure of yet is the point - meaning that is all this effort to allow you to produce an instrument with thicker sides than would otherwise be achievable without the reinforcement? Or is it purely to be able to use conventional thickness but more highly figured woods and have insurance against splitting and breakage while bending? Do you have anything on how side thickness/stiffness relates to the tone and clarity of an instrument - how it helps or hinders the soundboards?
"no" to Q #1, "yes to Q#2. Q#3 begs a whole series of questions we'll need to address globally sometime. Lots of different opinions here, and lots of paths to the mountaintop!
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 Thankyou for the kind reply Ken. Very much appreciated. I would be very much interested in your thoughts on Q3 (if you have not already done it in an interview/article somewhere). I'd also love to hear how your thinking evolved re: tones achieved, clarity, use of carbon fibre for stiffness etc from your early archtops, through the electric Fly and full circle back to these current archtops.
I like .010" stainless, the alloy isn't critical, here's an easy to access example, www.mscdirect.com/product/details/00052100 Fastening is by hook or by crook, as usual, brads?
Well, since the whole reason for peel-ply is that it is a "release film", and so is especially made so that it cannot be reliably bonded with epoxy resins, I would suggest that it wouldn't bond anything like well enough to take the stretching, or tensile loads it would "see" during bending, and would just pop of right when you need it to stay stuck on. I have found that using linen is the best solution for me, although I did try some other materials like cotton and thick Kraft paper on the way to this conclusion, and you could certainly try other bondable cloth or papers of your choosing if you like. Good luck!
Dear Ken,
How wonderfull is to see you sharing all this knowledge, with this kind generosity as precious as your smile ! I thank you so much. Cheers from France
You are very welcome! It's my pleasure.
I also learned of this channel through Crimson Guitars and subscribed immediately. I've been saying for years that Ken Parker is the Stardivari of our time when it comes to innovation and craftsmanship. His ideas and developments are where I learned to never be afraid to experiment. I've watched all the videos so far and look forward to more.
A.C.! Thanks, man! Gonna try to do it all! Go Get 'EM!
Very fine work.
Many thanks!
Great series. Really cool idea of using linen/epoxy.
Please don't stop filming Ken! Can't wait to see how the neck is made.
Thanks, Nick! The linen is really pleasant to work with, and seems to have just the right amount of strength and stretch to work perfectly. You could use other adhesives, but because I also use this epoxy resin as the first coat of my finish, it's a no brainer for me. This way, and little bit of adhesive left in the wood blends perfectly, and becomes part of the finish. Of course, it's a cinch to peel off the linen when you overheat the epoxy with an iron . All in all a fantastic help!
The neck process is coming, but wow, what a lot of special tools, and a big bag of tricks.
Thanks Ken
I was having trouble finding a source! I am ordering now.
I just started sizing my wood with a hand plane so by the time it gets here I should be done planing!
Thanks again, Pat
I'm just stumbling onto this idea -- what's a good source? I've been looking around and having a hard time finding .009 (and I'm not sure how sensitive the process is to the thickness of the linen). Thanks!
Here's a good place to shop for this linen,
www.onlinefabricstore.com/product-group-linen.aspx?product=handkerchief-linen
I believe that "handkerchief" linen is likely the thinnest style, and it works fine for this use.
Dear Ken,
Thank you for making available your videos on archtop construction- they are wonderful, well filmed, and I am really enjoying learning about your process.
I hope I'm not bothering you with a question. I recently watched the 4 video series on your side bending process, and was wondering what you do about the epoxy resin that is left on the sides after bending. I saw that you remove the patch of linen with the clothes iron, but - and forgive me if this is covered in a later video that I have yet to see- you make no mention of what you do about the residual epoxy on the sides.
Thanks again.
Ah, perhaps I did forget to mention this! This is crucially important to know, as many of us have had the heartbreak of only noticing some such problem after the finish has been applied.
By using the same material for the primer coat, we drive around this problem. The epoxy residue from the side reinforcement patches, whether we remove them or not ( I have done it both ways) is cleaned up with scraper and sandpaper, but, of course, some will remain in the side material, and this would be a terrible problem, except that the first coat of my finish is the exact same epoxy, and so the issue is resolved automatically, and just isn't a concern!
Just subscribed- Ben from Crimson Guitars sent me! Haven't watched anything yet but I might binge all your videos pretty soon
Welcome aboard!
Ben Crowe of Crimson sent me over Ken.
Welcome!
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and techniques!
Best wishes
My pleasure!
Ben from Crimson Guitars recommended your channel, so here I am. Looking great. I’m going to have to bing! Great to be here! Cheers 👍
Welcome aboard!
Awesome as always Ken! I have applied your linen trick (on typically difficult fragile flame maple .075) and, believe it or not, used titebond (not epoxy). and it still worked (I thought it would melt on the bend - behold it didn't!). I apply a similar tape trick to a (alternative) veneer/flax/epoxy lamination (no heat) clamped under vacuum (plastic/duct tapefrom Home Depot) and leave overnight. The 3M tape (white from Depot) comes right off and leaves an otherwise difficult bend intact. (Even veneer the thickness of a business card can gives some trouble) Doing it wrong but it works! ;) Thanks for letting us all geek out on your videos!
Excellent report! There's lots of ways to apply this "temporary tape'' reinforcing idea, as you suggest. The reason I like epoxy for this job is that I use the same epoxy resin as a primer coat, and so there is no worry about cleaning off every trace of a "foreign" adhesive, as any leftover resin from the "temporary tape" removal just becomes a homeboy part of the finish. If it works, then you must didn't do it wrong, now, didja? I dig your work, TogaMan!
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 oh, yes, I have even French Polished epoxy 😂. Lately though I’ve been applying vacuum infusion to veneer arch top sandwich balsa flax cf. (so the infused epoxy veneer is sand polishable). Eye candy with benefits and won’t crack like spruce does in extreme dry. I gave up the humidor fight….
Looks like a lot of us are Crimson Guitars fans! Found out about the channel through Ben as well and have been binging on all your videos today! Amazing to see the work that goes into your guitars!
Awesome! Thank you!
I like your Wetzler clamps, I acquired quite a collection of them when I was building custom furniture in the 1980s. And of course, your videos are wonderful!
Yeah, Wetzler and Hartford, sadly both gone forever. Glad you like the videos!
Thank you for these videos, they are fantastic! I really like your side molds and would love to know if they are designed to have the thickness of the side, straps and blankets in mind? Meaning, do the two parts of the mold fit perfectly together without anything in there or is there a gap designed into them? Again, thanks for sharing your knowledge. 🕉
Excellent question. What you refer to, "designing a gap into them" is called an offset.
If you are clamping/laminating a flat panel, all you need are two flat plates to apply pressure and control the surfaces.
So, in the 2D world, offset isn't an issue.
When you leave the world of flat planes, everything changes in some interesting ways.
To get the tool surfaces to control the bent side as I'm showing, these two tool components need to be cut so as to leave room for the side, 2 rubber heat blankets and the 2 stainless steel shims.
To do a good job, these tools need to be quite accurate.
Assuming we start with a hard outline pattern of your guitar shape, my cheap and cheerful way to mark the correct size offsets is this...
Glue up plywood or particleboard sheets to the required thickness for your sides.
In my experience, particleboard, although kinda disgusting, is the better choice, as it starts out pretty flat, plus its homogeneity compared to a stack of plywood makes it so much easier to follow a line precisely on the bandsaw. If you tune up your saw and fit a sharp 1/4" blade, you'll have a good chance of cutting so well that cleanup will be trivial. That's the goal.
If the top surface is rough or funny texture/color that makes it hard to see your pen mark, consider gluing on a piece of smooth paper to get a proper surface for the pen.
Using the correct size flat washer,
ua-cam.com/video/Moe5IBhwX7Q/v-deo.html
follow your guitar outline pattern and mark the outer part of the tool with a pen so as to expand the outline by the amount of one heat blanket plus one Stainless Steel shim's combined thickness.
"The correct size flatwasher" is judged by the difference between the outside and inside diameters, this is what we care about. Within reason, the diameter of the washer doesn't matter.
Two solutions to the problem of finding the right size washer are ..
1) Look through your giant box of odd washers you've been keeping for the last %#^$ years, or
2) Chuck up a bar of metal or plastic in your lathe, and make the correct part (easy).
Saw and clean up these surfaces with sanding blocks or your spindle sander, accuracy counts.
Now you use this outside tool to mark the inside part of the tool with another washer, this one sized to offset the whole stack of 2 heat blankets, 2 SS shims, and one guitar side.
It seems like this would be a good thing to demo, so we'll put it on the list, thanks!
Am I the only one who wasn’t recommended to come here? 😂 I love Crimson, but this series popped up for me in searches. Excited to follow along.
Welcome!
Crimson Guitars Subscriber Army reporting for duty.
Yeah! At ease!
Thanks a lot ken for all your sharing.
I fold the sides in aluminium foil to conserve water, but I don't find glue that supports hot bending, to do that. What is this glue ?
Sorry, I'm not sure what you are asking.
Glue for what?
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 : glue for protection that prevents splits in the ribs during folding.
Found my way here via the GAL article, and man, is it ever worth the search! I'm almost ready to take the plunge and try an archtop, since I don't play the flattop I built.
Great! Go for it! It's such a fun project to carve such beautiful shapes in wood!
Great stuff. I'm not sure what's more impressive: your novel approach to bending or the fact that you buy your dutch masters by the box.
HA!
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 On a more serious note: Thank you for producing these videos. Ervin Somogyi mixes his epoxy with chopsticks chucked into a power drill... we had a running joke over there that this trick alone was worth the price of admission as an apprentice. These videos are full of gems and I don't even have to do your laundry for three years; thanks! ;-)
Brilliant video series. I'm another one from the recommendation Ben Crowe's channel
Awesome, thank you!
Does the epoxy leaves any residue after sanding ? I guess not. Fabulous craftsmanship
since I use the same resin for the sealer/primer coat, it isn't an issue.
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 Thanks a lot for your answer. Makes perfect sense
So you are not laminating these, but leaving the sides single ply at 0.055"??? Thanks.
I have done sides several ways, and this one is the most direct, with simple methods and tooling.
I'm currently using a much more complex method, but chose to show the universal style that I thought the most of you would benefit from.I did it this way for over a decade, with many guitars.
Maybe I missed it. How thick are the sides?
You did, but it's easy to miss, I should have called it out at the start. The sides are sawn and finely sanded to .055" - .060", or 1.5mm before bending, but are so well behaved that they need only a tiny bit of sanding with 320 and 800 to be ready for finish. I feel this is just right for the size instrument I make. There are different opinions on this, of course, but I want the sides to be compliant, as I think it frees the plates to vibrate better.
Hey Ken, I'm wondering what your thoughts are around the idea that the rim, which supports the top plate, should be maximum stiffness (like a banjo). To that end I know some luthiers use a multi-ply, usually three, for sides. I have a hybrid nylon string that employs this technique and it's a canon! The construction is still very light weight. Obviously more work.
There's a lot to say about your question, and I promise we'll get around to this in detail sometime. There seem to be at least two schools of thought here, with some builders favoring thin, one piece sides, (inspired by 100 year old Martin mahogany guitars?) and others going for the brick outhouse format with multiple epoxy bonded laminates and even solid wood cores with laminates on both sides. Both can be successful, it seems to me. I like sides to be compliant and light, so that's one end of the spectrum, but lots of fine builders are getting great results with very stiff laminates, so what do I know? The mad scientists in the classical guitar world were the first to go this way, i believe, with steel string builders following suit. If you haven't looked lately, there's a lot of interesting newish design thinking in the classical guitar world in search of an expanded dynamic range (AKA Louder!) the embodiments of which have caught on with professional players.
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440"If you haven't looked lately, there's a lot of interesting newish design thinking in the classical guitar world in search of an expanded dynamic range (AKA Louder!) the embodiments of which have caught on with professional players." Yes like the double top thing of which I've seen done different ways including the use of Nomex which is a material borrowed from the aerospace industry I believe. The goal of course is to produce a very light weight, high modulus plate. Can't wait to hear your thoughts on this in an upcoming video. Really enjoying the series.
That linen trick is so cool. Never seen that before. I broke several sides on a tight cutaway guitar recently and managed to achieve it in the end using OBrien guitars technique of a steam box I built to steam the side for 15mins before bending. It worked reliably repeatedly but I’m sure on some woods it would cause them to ripple badly. I will try your method on the next one. I’ve got some zpoxy so hopefully that’ll work as well. Thanks for the videos.
Cool to hear from you. Steam plasticizes the wood, but without discipline, the wood can really distend and get into all kinds of unwanted wiggles. This is where the pinch mold really shines, it leaves the wood no choice but to resolve and dry in the correct shape.
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 yes ken. You method other than the cloth is similar to the Fox bender I built myself only I feel your pinch mould is probably slightly more accurate and less chance the wood could ripple. How long do you keep the heating blanket on for when it goes in the mould?
Crimson Custom Guitars sent me. I'll be starting from video 1 later today.
Thanks!
Hi Ken,
So I've now watched through this series and I understand the concepts of reinforcing the side under tension and the calculation of how thickness affects stiffness.
What I'm not sure of yet is the point - meaning that is all this effort to allow you to produce an instrument with thicker sides than would otherwise be achievable without the reinforcement?
Or is it purely to be able to use conventional thickness but more highly figured woods and have insurance against splitting and breakage while bending?
Do you have anything on how side thickness/stiffness relates to the tone and clarity of an instrument - how it helps or hinders the soundboards?
"no" to Q #1, "yes to Q#2. Q#3 begs a whole series of questions we'll need to address globally sometime. Lots of different opinions here, and lots of paths to the mountaintop!
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 Thankyou for the kind reply Ken. Very much appreciated. I would be very much interested in your thoughts on Q3 (if you have not already done it in an interview/article somewhere). I'd also love to hear how your thinking evolved re: tones achieved, clarity, use of carbon fibre for stiffness etc from your early archtops, through the electric Fly and full circle back to these current archtops.
Wonderful videos, thank you.
Glad you like them!
i like the sizzling bacon sound! cool video
Glad you liked it!
Hi Ken what kind of metal and how is it fastened to the wood blocks do you use for backind up the wood you are bending?
I like .010" stainless, the alloy isn't critical, here's an easy to access example, www.mscdirect.com/product/details/00052100
Fastening is by hook or by crook, as usual, brads?
Ben from Crimson Guitars told me to get over to your site and subscribe.... Done. 👍😊
Awesome! Thank you!
Ben Crowe sent me. New sub!
Welcome!
could you use peel ply instead of linen ?
Well, since the whole reason for peel-ply is that it is a "release film", and so is especially made so that it cannot be reliably bonded with epoxy resins, I would suggest that it wouldn't bond anything like well enough to take the stretching, or tensile loads it would "see" during bending, and would just pop of right when you need it to stay stuck on. I have found that using linen is the best solution for me, although I did try some other materials like cotton and thick Kraft paper on the way to this conclusion, and you could certainly try other bondable cloth or papers of your choosing if you like. Good luck!
Hi Ken! You Tube brought me here! How much time de sides must be compressed in the mould?
More like restrained than really compressed. Overnight, of better, usually. Just wait until they're dry again is the most important thing.