Yesterday I started bending the myrtlewood sides for a guitar I'm working on. The regular non cutaway side bent beautifully. A perfect bend, no springback, no staining, no problems whatsoever. I wrapped it in wet brown craft paper and sandwiched it between two stainless steel slats with the blanket on top.
The cutaway side did not go so good. It's got some fractures so I'm not going to try to use it. The only differences are that I bent between to spring steel slats since it is a cutaway, and I wrapped the wood in foil instead of paper. I think the wood must have dried out in the foil being the reason it cracked. I have done plenty of successful cutaway test bends when wrapping in paper and then re-wetting during bending. The only problem is every time I do this I get some bad staining and I cant figure out why. The only way I could bend the cutaway test between spring steel without staining was to wrap it good in foil. Has anyone else here had the problem of bad staining when using spring steel? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Here are some pics.
Stained maple test
Stained koa test
Stained myrtle test
Spring steel slats
Is it normal for spring steel to look like this after only experimenting with them a few times.