Patching a botched purfling

[Stray Feathers]

I don't know how I did not notice this purfling glitch but as I prepared a dreadnought body to have its neck glued on, it glared at me accusingly.

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I tried very hard to blame the purfling but I think I must have goofed somehow when gluing it. I'm getting better at realizing I don't want to look at these things forever, so I decided to repair it. The purflings were prebent mosaic purflings from Domo in Japan, sold by JAPARTS in Vancouver, BC. Fortunately I had bought two sets, and I decided if I was going to get this guitar into the finishing process this summer, I would have to sacrifice the second set (about $15 the set) to get a prebent patch to use. I heated the purfling with the tip of an iron to get it to loosen up, and found it was so poorly seated that, once started, it came up fairly easily (with care and newly honed chisels) and the damage went further than I initially thought.

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I had to widen the channel a tiny bit in some places, and then glued the patch in. Needs a little more sanding and a little filling, but it will be better than what I had yesterday. Now I have to learn to do this right the first time, and not have to do it over . . . Bruce W.

[banjopicks]

What did you do wrong to cause that?? Looks like the inner strip was missing in that area.

[Stray Feathers]

If you mean the inner orange/red line, yes, that's what I initially thought too. But after finding that part of the whole strip was not properly seated, I think I must have a) not pushed it down hard enough when gluing it into the channel in the first place and b) sanded down through the layers that were the shallowest. The routed channel itself might have been a little shallow too. I've found many ways to have to do bindings and purflings twice . . . Bruce W.

[Kevin Sjostrand]

Great fix. I can't see the splices.