www.KitGuitarsForum.com

To start with: if you want a binding machine, the one John sells for $315 is a remarkable bargain. So far I've spent at least a hundred bucks on materials and at least four solid days of work, and I've got at least a couple more days to go to get all the details cleaned up. By the time I'm done, I figure I will have been working for about 2 bucks an hour. It makes far more economic sense to buy one. But, I built it because I enjoy building things. Saving money wasn't the point.

Anyway...here's a photo. Since I do metalworklng, I made the telescoping arm out of square aluminum tubing. Instead of a horizontal lazy susan bearing for a pivot, mine pivots in a couple of plastic bushings riding on a vertical post. Otherwise, It's pretty much the same design.

I haven't used it on a guitar yet, but a couple of test cuts on the edge of a board were a revelation. I think it's going to make cutting binding channel so easy even I may get it right.

Wow! That looks great.

Looks excellent! One thing I discovered with mine (made from wood and plastic because I am not a machinist . . . ) was that I found the sides of the guitars were not uniformly plumb (vertical) all round. Mine weren't for a couple of reasons I think, and I found the jig could not make uniform rabbets. I had to check different sectors of the guitar bodies for plumb, and adjust them in the cradle I made, and make the cuts in several shorter passes. Next time I will be more careful in the build process to ensure the sides are as plumb as I can get them, and hopefully will not have as much fiddling to do. It occurred to me that the smaller jigs that follow the sides would avoid this problem.

Hmm...I would have thought that any error caused by variation in perpendicularity of the sides would be small enough to be ignored. I will have to look into the geometry and see if I can get an idea of how much variation is tolerable. Since one can discern quite small variations in binding width, it may not take much.

Assuming I've done this correctly, variation in the perpendicularity of the sides can be quite significant. I drew a 3" tall "side" vertical., tipped 1 degree inward, and tipped 1 degree outward. I drew a cutter and bearing set up to cut a 0.020" deep rabbet 1/4" wide.

On the side tipped inward 1 degree, the 0.020" rabbet is cut only 0.0057"/ On the side tipped 1 degree outward, the 0.020" rabbet is cut 0.0265". The differences are not symmetric because the point of contact is not the same.

These drawings are almost certainly not 100% accurate -- I just guessed at the bearing width and its distance below the cutting edge --but it is pretty clear that perpendicularity matters!

this is where the cradle helps
as the guitar is not a square object you use the cradle to adjust the body to the cutter to get the sides vertical and as square off the table as you can make it ,so those tiny adjustments are made that way

I watched John's series of 3 videos on the binder. Using the cradle made it insanely easy to keep the router parallel.

https://youtu.be/Lan2pKWE1Do

I should explain that my difficulties arose from errors I must have made before I cut the binding rabbets. I was using a form made by a friend who used it to make several guitars, but I may not have been careful enough with spreaders, and I also used a plywood rim (is this the "halo" people talk about?) which screwed down to the form to clamp the plates to the sides. I was aware it all seemed under a lot of stress, and it may have pulled the sides out of whack. When I realized what was happening I tried to clean up the rabbets and had to shift the position of the guitars at several points to bring the sides vertical - no simple single pass around the whole instrument. I assumed the system would all work out, but I found a way to get myself in trouble. People are not permitted to look at my bindings . . . I decided soon after that to look for a lot of cam clamps on sale (which I have not found) or to make 20 or so (I have found good plans) before I get to that point on my next build, and be super careful using my binding jig.

can you post some pics strayfeathers? it may help to see what your process was
jh

Can anyone compare the Fleishman style machine to the Ensor style binding jig? Has anyone used both? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each?