Alright, I was very stubborn about making this work, and in the end I had to compromise some, but I think it was worth it. Since it's survived and dried out over 12 hours I think I can say it's worked.
It still needs to be glued in place but it's taken it's shape.
So I asked for a lot of advice and got a lot of suggestion on how to make this work and how to move on without it, in the end I stuck pretty close to the books.
So useful. So Hahn was pretty clear that he used ebony, which is impossible to bend, so he laminated 1mm thick, 3mm wide strips. No one sells those, so you have to make your own.
Many ebony planks died in the making of these strips, but only because it was a learning process.
1. What I started with. Maybe one pass through the planer. I used carpenters taped, which was too strong next time I will use regular double sided tape, to hold the plank onto a balsa wood board and run it through the planer at the lowest setting possible.
2. You have to run it at the lowest setting possible and just graze the ebony otherwise it was crack, shatter, and explode, like this piece.
3. Even while being careful and working through the learning curve I broke a number of planks. What's no pictured here is the step between 2 and 3 which is cutting these thinner pieces on a proxxon table saw to get them to the correct 3mm width. That also will break some pieces.
4. In the end I finished with 4 or 5 strips long enough and in good enough shape to use.
Originally I tested laminating two ebony strips on top of each other, that's the way Hahn did it. I wasn't ready for that. I didn't have enough strips to try and do it without breaking them. So I cheated and used someone's suggestion and made the base out of balsa.
It was one piece, took some shaping, but normal soaking and heating to the shape.
After a day of shaping I glued it in place. If you haven't noticed I love zipties. They are essential for these tough shapes. I forgot to take a photo but I was able to get both sides nearly perfectly level with each other. Oh and as you can see I had already cut out the top parts here. Its a bit out of order but I wanted to cut these out before doing the ebony, less chance of causing damage.
Two days after I glued in the balsa I started on the ebony. I soaked the two best strips I had for about a day, then I soaked them in hot water for about a half hour before I started working. It took time, probably an hour or two for each side, but you just slowly, slowly, bend with heat to shape. I started at the bow and worked that into place. Once the bow was shaped I zip tied into place and worked my way slowly down the haul using zip ties as I went. That was important because that's what kept the shape. The balsa has to be glued well to the haul in order to hold the ebony in place. But in the end here we are!
Note the zip tie isn't damaging the ebony because it's flush, so no dents.
So the ebony will only be 2mm thick instead of 3mm but I don't think it'll make a big difference.
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