Blogging Fatso!

[Kevin Sjostrand]

I learned one thing from Robbie O'brien that I did on my first 3 and didn't do on the current #4 guitar. When glueing on the binding, he wraps the whole guitar with a long cloth strip to help pull the bindings in really tight. This goes over the tape. It works really well to make sure the binding is well into the channels. For some reason I did not do this on my current build (a brain fart), and I now have the area around the cutaway bouts where the binding is not in as tight as it should have been. Wrapping it would have taken care of this. This really helps when the wood binding is not shaped quite perfectly to the body contour....such was the case with mine.
Anyway, I think you are using plastic bindings? You probably would not need or want to do this with those since there are so flexible.

Kevin

[David L]

I'm using fiber binding. I thought about wrapping the whole thing with one of those long rubber band thingies but it takes me so long to complete the binding on one side that the glue is practically set up on about the first half by the time I'm done so I'm not sure how much good it would do. I went with fiber because I'm not a big fan of plastic and fiber is flexible enough that it doesn't need to be pre-bent. The top is still under tape, but the back came out pretty tight, no gaps that I can see, I'll know more when I scrape and sand.

David L

[johnnparchem]

carefull taking the tape off of the top. I used a heat gun on my last guitar to avoaid pulling up redwod fibers.

[David L]

Binding complete, it came out real good, I'm very surprised, I have no complaints at all, well maybe I think white binding would have looked better but I will drive myself absolutely batty if I start on the "what ifs". I used John P's trick of using the heat gun to help remove the tape on the top and it worked real well. Thanks John! I had already removed the tape from the back when I got John's tip.

David L

[David L]

And here's the top.

David L

[johnnparchem]

I used John P's trick of using the heat gun to help remove the tape on the top and it worked real well. Thanks John! I had already removed the tape from the back when I got John's tip.
David L

Rick Davis taught me the trick using the heat gun as I was tearing up my top:).

Your work looks great.

[Kevin Sjostrand]

David,
You are doing fine work there. Personally I like the darker look of the binding....more subtle. I've never been a fan of white plastic binding...now maple or koa would have been nice too, but what you've done looks really good.
I sure like the end wedge, what was that, black and white ebony?

Kevin

[enalnitram]

+1 on the dark binding. looks nice!

[David L]

Thanks for the words of encouragement on the black bindings guys, and the looks should be a lot better under finish. The end wedge is black and white ebony, some people call it striped ebony, It looks skewed in the pictures but it's not. I'm going to make the neck heel cap out of it also, in fact that is my next operation, not looking forward to trying to get a straight cut on the heel.

David L

[David L]

Here's the heel cap made from striped ebony to match the end graft.

David L