Homemade Heating Blanket For $1

[hobocaster]

Hi all,

I just wanted to share this idea for new broke repair-people like myself. I've made a lot of investments in specialized tools from lmi, stewmac, and the like, but have yet to buy any of the nice heating blankets for bridges and fingerboards, etc.. A year and a half ago while digging around at a thrift shop, I came across an electric coffee mug warmer for $1. It's like a coaster with a plug, and it gets fairly hot. My gears got spinning, and I took apart the casing to reveal the heating element inside (which is a few inches long). I wrapped it in foil and voila! A funky little heater that i can use to remove bridges and whatnot. It's surely not as nice as the LMI blankets, but for a beginner with limited resources, it does the job. I considered wiring in a dimmer switch to control the amount of heat, but I've used it on a half dozen jobs with no problems yet.

[Tom Krebs]

You can use the coffee cup heater for heating up hide glue as well.

[Donald A. Fortune]

hey Hobo-- ya kno, my wife calls things like that being a cheep scate but I have a tendency to agree with things that can be made out of something else like that.
Good job and iffin ya aint careful yall end up like Frank Ford whom I think is the greatest inventer of things like that ....
Be well and all the best,
Donald

[Rick Homan]

Way cool! By the way, is there any reason not to use a laundry iron on fretboard extensions? It seems as if it would sit on the frets and heat it up efficiently. Of course, the earlier discussion on this forum regarding heat guns and hair dryers was also illuminating.

[Doug Collins]

I'm far from an expert, but I can tell you I have used a laundry iron on a fretboard a few times with some success. But be cautioned, an iron can get very hot and you can burn the wood if you're not careful. I have also used it for taking off a bridge, but only if it was to be replaced or re-finished.

Doug Collins

[Carter Ruff]

re- laundry iron on fretboard extensions. I do it all the time. I use thin, marine plywood with aluminum foil tape on the up side to protect the finish on either side of the fingerboard. I set the iron to its highest heat, and set a timer to two minutes. One to two rounds of this gets the job done nearly every time, and with little to no collateral damage to touch up.

For whatever else it's worth, I usually pop bridges off cold with a small fishtail that I've stropped to a nice edge.

I'm all for cheap solutions, too. If you can develop and engineer them, you are keeping exercised at problem solving, which is what this game's all about. It all feeds into the same stream, if you know what I mean.

-Carter

[Doug Collins]

Now I'm a bit of a pack rat and recently I threw away a coffee maker, but I kept the burner. Now I know what to do with it.

Thanks!

Doug Collins

[Ron Frazier]

I saw a water bed heater that burned the chip board base. The water was out of the maturce. I have been going to try it on my side bender. It has a temp countrol all ready.

Robro Ron

[Mark Dobbins]

my girlfriend fears for her curling irons life because i want to reincarnate it as a bridge removal iron she sick of hearing me say i could use that for guitar work!