Binding Channels

Undoubtedly one of the more stressful parts of building a guitar taking a 10,000 RPM router to a guitar body, quite a bit can go wrong.. If you've followed this blog you've seen a couple of ways I've cut binding channels in the past.. All worked with varying degrees of stress and some variance in accuracy.. Most of the jigs I used were chosen to accommodate having a very small space for a shop. I just don't have room for a large parallel arm fleishman/williams-style jig.. I've been looking at the LMI or the Stewmac jig for some time and when LMI updated their design I did some thinking and decided that looked the best..

It is still a compact jig that I can store away in a cupboard when not in use and it works like a charm..

Setup is easy, adjustment straight forward and it works, despite screwing up the install of the top bindings and having to cut them off (with the jig) and even that when well..

Just pay attention to the getting the guitar level in the carrier.

I am far less stressed about cutting binding channels now that I have this jig.

The only change I had to make was a slightly different assembly of the carrier since I am doing a small bodied guitar..

Carrier assembled in a "non-standard" way

The results

Mounted to my work table

Arm Bevel Done and Time to Start on the Neck

Well the binding and arm bevel are done, since this was my first try at an arm bevel I used the simplest binding possible which still look fine IMHO.. Not actually to hard to do but I can see how a more complex binding scheme would be difficult.

For those interested I used cyanoacrylate glue for the bindings but fish glue for the veneer on the bevel.

Not on to the fingerboard and neck..

Glued, Taped and Elastic

Completed Body

I'm Happy with how the Binding & Bevel look

The Back - Oregon Myrtle

Plain & Simple

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Finished the Bridge

Well since I built these bridge jigs there is only one way to test them out and that is to finish the bridge for this guitar. I think It turned out good.

Before -- rough ebony blank

After - Bound, slotted and drilled

The other side -- Saddle is black horn,
the pins will be Bloodwood to match the binding.

Bindings Done

Things really start to take shape once the bindings are done. You can see the finish line it feels like..

I'm very happy with how the Bloodwood looks with the Indian Rosewood.

Gluing up the Bindings

I'm slow at this but since I use fish glue for the bindings I can afford to be slow.

Using Fish Glue you can even stop to take aphoto

Now just needs to dry, the one disadvantage of Fish Glue is it takes a good 12+ hours to dry

Trying My New Fox Bender

I had some "issues" bending the Bloodwood bindings for this OM using my bending Iron so luckily I had a brand new Fox style bender I got from Blues Creek Guitars standing buy. After quickly making a bending form for this guitar (all of a 15 minute job).. I gave bending the bindings and perfling a try.

It worked like a charm. There are MANY methods out there for doing this mine was to, tape together then bindings, lightly spray with water and wrap in tinfoil. Then sandwich bottom to top, spring steel slat, bindings in tinfoil, spring steel slat and heating blanket. Heat to 305 degrees (a bit high but Bloodwood is hard to bend) then bend and cool then reheat to 250 degrees for 10 minutes and cool and remove, this seemed to end up with very little spring back..

Note since these bindings have perfling on the bottom they are left and right so you need to take that into consideration then orienting the bindings in the bender otherwise you will end up with all left or all right side bindings..

Can't wait to try this bender on some sides.

I actually bought the from and spring steel from Blues Creek and the controller and blanket from LMI

TADA.. :-)

Routing Binding Channels

Well today I put the new binding cutter jig I made to the test and it worked quite well, much better than other methods I have tried. I'm very pleased with it :-)

OK Yes I have to add dust collection..

Pretty easy to set up just loosen the two screws for binding thickness adjustment and the built in router depth adjustment for the depth

Looks good