It has been almost 5 months since I last worked on this guitar. Which is a bit sad but not really all that surprising as I spent April building an Acoustic guitar, May riding a bike through Spain, June and July training for the
Pan Mass Challenge, and August training for
Reach the Beach. Let's also not forget that summer is for lazing about occasionally - so it really shouldn't be a surprise that I didn't get that far with this over the summer.
But now it's almost fall - and that's prime luthier time. Here's what I've been working on...
I had some Cocobolo binding strips left over from my
lapsteel build so I decided to try binding this guitar. I'm hoping that it will make up for the fact that this body shape is basically a
PRS - but it doesn't have a carved top.
So what is binding? Usually it is a strip of plastic (and occasionally wood) that is used to 'dress-up' a guitar. On acoustics, semi-hollowbody, and carved top electric guitars it is used to hide the seam where the top of the guitar meets the sides. Bindings also help protect that joint from bumps and bruises.
Since this guitar has a top glued to the rest of the body - the binding should help beautify and protect the instrument.
But how is it done? First you have to route a channel around the body for the binding to sit in. It should be less than the thickness and height of the binding itself and you scrape the excess off. I used a router with a bit that had a small ball bearing guide on the bottom. The ball bearing follows the contour of the guitar and the blade (set to a shallow depth) cuts out less than a 1/4th of an inch of wood from the top and side of the guitar. Once you've done that - you glue your binding in the channel.
If you have plastic bindings - it's usually no big thing (spoken by a man who has only used them once). The plastic bindings are flexible and can be glued to wood with several types of glue. The one and only time I've done it - it went fast and smooth. Now wood bindings are a whole other thing...
Normally when you bend wood you want to apply heat and moisture to weaken the wood fibers enough for them to bend but not enough for them to break. I used the left-over cocobolo binding. Cocobollo is an almost water-proof - so moistening the wood would be pointless. I had to rely on heat alone. For this I used a heatgun - which is basically a hairdryer on steroids. Whether you are using heat and moisture or just heat alone - you have to go slow - don't force the wood into it's new position too fast because it will break. Also, keep the heat source (or the workpiece) moving constantly. If you stay in one place for too long your binding will look like Zydeco Jim's catfish-burgers - blackened. I had a few crispy areas around the horns of the body but that was more because in order to do a full u-turn with the binding I had to sit there with the heat for a while. For the most part you could tell when the binding was going to start bending - it just started to feel like it had some give to it.
I installed my bindings in a two-step process. Heating the binding and bending it to the shape of the body was part 1. In order to help the binding keep it's shape I taped it to the body with painter's tape. Once the binding was completely cool (about 15-20 minutes) I started part two - gluing the binding. You also end up taping the binding to the body when gluing (or if you have enough of them - rubber bands work too). Some people may be able to do this all in one step - so you only tape the body once. I did it in two steps but the results came out pretty good. I still had to hit the horns with the heatgun again as I was gluing (warning - you glue will start to dry super fast if you do this) but mostly the binding held it's shape after heating/taping. Here's a close up of part 1 (part 2 looked pretty similar :D ).
Once your glue has dried you have to scrape the excess binding material. I actually like scraping. I'm a big fan of the
card scraper (also known as a cabinet scraper). They are small, fast, and accurate - especially when sharpened correctly. So, below is the binding post glueing, drying, and scraping. I'll have to touch-up the horns a bit - but I'm pretty happy with it.
