Making your own purfling

[naccoachbob]

Could someone tell me how they make their own purfling? I'm speaking of wood or fiber, for example, I'd like a top purfling of B/R/B/R/B. Black and red. Then I'd like B/R/B between the binding and the sides.
What I'm visualizing is: gluing up sheets of the colors, then somehow cutting them when done to fit in the channels. But don't know what techiniques to use.
Do they need to be bent to the guitar's shape before going into the channels? If the top strips weren't joined together, then that wouldn't be necessary. Cannot get my head around doing the side purfling.
Thanks,
Bob

[penndan]

Bob
Check out Hans Brentrup
http://www.brentrup.com/page3/page3.html
He makes his own very colorful purfling.

Dan

[Ken C]

Bob,

I made my first purflings recently for the spalted mango guitar. I sandwiched bloodwood or osage orange between 0.01" black fiber. I laminated sections that were 2" wide by 34" long. I ripped the laminated pieces into purfling sized strips using my thin kerf fretboard slotting blade on my table saw. I used the same BRB purflings for the sides, back, and top. However on the top, I laid in the black/osage/black alongside the BRB.

I bend my side purflings when I bend my bindings. The trick to bending them is to sandwich the side purflings between bindings and tape them up tight.

Ken

[tippie53]

It is fun to learn this stuff as it gives you a bit more on the pallet .