Hey whiskey, a while back we were having monthly lotteries for tonewood from Grant. Buy a ticket, get in on the drawing. Haven't had one for a while, but look for it to start up again.
And John, I think you've got the right read on what happened to that one side bent with the blanket on top. Makes perfect sense.
I went back to putting the blanket under the top slat and bent an orphan side just fine. The slats did make an oil-caning sound as I bent the upper bout and I was afraid that there would be a crack, but got lucky. Anyway that firmed up Grants opinion that the open form I'm using isn't giving good support thru the bend, so I went in and added some dowel rods to support the upper and lower bouts.
And I also switched to springs instead of the eyebolts to get smoother action on the upper bout bend.
So I found a couple of extra African mahogany sides, sanded them to .085", shaped them, and bent them with the blanket under the upper slat, and success on both. Perfect bends.
So, it looks like I'm back on track with un-cooked wood. We'll have to see how it goes with the thermally treated wood down the line.
And hey Dennis..... look no dark spots. And if you look at the shop floor in the pics you can see I sure as heck haven't cleaned the shop. So I wonder if it is something in the Downey or SuperSoft?