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Hi there,

Well now that I’ve calmed down over the blunder I had with the binding in the previous post, I’m going to get back at it here and start the final finishing of the binding.

For this next step which I found is very crucial to the finish, we need to scrap the sides down so that the binding and rosewood are even, level and true to each other. To do that I use cabinet scrapers. I’ve no idea why they’re called cabinet scrapers, I just know that they work very well and are very, very sharp. I picked up a whole set of different size ones at Lee Valley, as shown below.

So essentially, all that was needed was to scrape the excess wood down to an even surface. You can pretty much tell how far you need to go just by running the palm of your hand over it every once in a while. Here’s some pictures – the first you’ll see that it is mostly taking the white maple but in the second, as the level gets more and more level you can see it taking some of the rose wood.

Next time we’ll do the final step on the body (at least until we finish the neck), and that’s filling in all the itty bitty spaces.

OK so it’s been a while since my last post, but that’s solely because of other projects……

You see, Clark’s Guitars started out (obviously) with building acoustic guitars but considering how long this one has been taking, I’ve found that it’s just not a feasible business for replacing the money I make with roofing. So, long story short, I’ve decided to build electric guitars instead. If you haven’t already, check out this page: Clark’s Guitars Products Page

Now back to binding the acoustic, and the simple mistake I made that almost cost me the entire instrument…

Once the maple binding was in place, I was free to start sanding it level and smooth. The big problem here is that the binding cutter I used from Stewart MacDonald didn’t end up cutting the groove perfect – and if there’s one thing I’ve realized throughout this building process is that if it’s not perfect, it’ll look like crap. There were a few places where the angle just wasn’t right – this is likely due to the tiny, tiny roller bearing on the cutter that I needed to hold on to in order to keep it flat against the sides.

Here’s the cutter I used:

So in the end, after sanding, I had sanded right through the maple binding and into the perfling. You can see in the next image – in the areas where I sanded right through the maple, the groove was cut more like the left side.

Here’s the worst of the spots:

So what I ended up doing was cutting that section out and re-cutting it. What a mess. The pictures speak for themselves, so have a look.

After all of the messing around, here’s how it looks now: still not perfect but it’s better than it was.

I’ve learned a lot from this, and still may redo it again. Next time we’ll work a bit on the neck.

So this week I’ll be talking about the binding installation….. There’s a few places where I feel I could have done much better with this, but hey, that’s what this blog is all about – showing you my mistakes.

Here’s the body (you’ll recognize the picture, I’ve used it for the front page of the site) with a piece of the quilted maple banding that I got from A&M Wood Supply in Cambridge.

The book said to glue the purflings to the bandings prior to bending – apparently that was the easier method. What I found was that as soon as I needed to prebend each of the four pieces to the desired shape (they wouldn’t bend easily without heat and moisture), the purfling just separated from the banding like there wasn’t even any glue there – and with that, there was of course a couple pieces that just didn’t want to bend (or I’m just not experienced enough with the bending iron yet LOL). What a mess. See the below pics.

Once the bandings were all bent (after I took the purflings off), they were’nt all exactly the same so I placed them between a heavy chunk of wood and my bench vice while they dried and cooled.

So despite it all, the binding actually seemed like quite an easy task at first. Boy, was I wrong. So the first step was to put the purflings onto the body and glue them in place. The ones that were destined for the top and back were easy, as they just needed to be bent laterally. I glued them to the binding channels as laid out in the book. I laid out a double row of purflings here because the pattern I wanted called for two rows on the top.

Note the tape. This is just standard green painter’s tape. Also note in the next picture what happens when you take the tape off too fast without being careful.

We’ll continue next time with more binding.