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i didnt take any pictures, youll just have to take my word for it... i did a lowsy job with my first attempt at binding my guitar. i cut a perfect binding channel with a williams style jig and did a decent job bending the ebony binding in my doolin style bending machine. i was careful to dry fit everything and got what i thought seemed to be a good fit at head and tail blocks respectively. i would be embarassed to tell you the number of bar clamps i had rigged up to get everything nice and tight. well it wasnt tight enough. upon removing the tape and clamps it was just a mess of gaps. something im not willing to live with. so i cut the binding off and in doing so split the grain out at the end graft and got some tear out in random spots along the length of the sides. im very proud of the work ive done up to this point and want to do the best job possible. i believe i can fill the spots where the grain tore out and i will probably replace said end graft.

that was a long story i suppose just to get to what i would like to know. i believe the problem i had stemmed not from the fit of the binding along its length, but rather from the arch of the back. the binding fits near perfect on the top of the guitar (28' radius), but wants to bend and twist in all sorts of crazy ways on the back (15' radius).

so my questions... how do you cope with this? i was thinking of ordering the rubber binding strap from LMI, do any of you use that or something similar? is there a way to get a better fit that doesnt require the application of so much pressure? please help.

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sweat the small stuff.

Making binding fit properly on a highly domed back is very tricky business. Basically the binding has to bend in two directions. It must follow the outline of the guitar shape and rise and fall with the the changes in width of the side. The only way I know of to bend binding this way is to bend the pieces one at a time on a hot pipe. That way you can put both ends in at once.

Trying to just bend it over a form, and then force it into place with lots of clamping rarely gives good results and leaves so much stress in the binding and so much load on the glue joint that gaps and lacquer cracks are bound to develop over time.

Bending in two axis on a pipe is much easier if you rig up a "backstop" of sorts on your bending pipe. This can be a strip of metal wrapped around and held with a hose clamp or just a post attached to the pipe. (sorry, no picture handy)

I battled with binding installation and often got less than great results until I gave up bending them all at once in my Fox bender and started bending them one at a time on a pipe. Now I easily bend them to fit, hold them on with tape and rarely have and problems.

It does take a lot longer my way, but the results are worth it.

Mark

mark and todd, thank you for you replies.

mark, i was beggining to suspect that a hot pipe might be a good remedy, but was having a hard time imagining what is basically a three demensional bend. the back stop you describe sounds like it would work great. i have a funny feeling im going to break a whole bunch of ebony binding that way however.

todd, a few questions if you dont mind. does the work board under the guitar have a dome to match the guitar? are those the stew mac bands you are using? do you bend on a pipe as mark desribes or just in a bender like i did?

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sweat the small stuff.

Ebony binding is very hard to work with. It is very difficult to bend and is so hard and stiff that it doesn't respond well to being forced into place with clamping pressure. It also tends to look identical to black plastic once the finish is on. I find macassar ebony to be much easier to work with, much easier to bend !! It is very dark but it still looks like wood after the lacquer goes on. It's often easy to find good macassar binding stock at hardwood lumber yards because most people like the really stripey stuff so the boring pieces that are a more uniform chocolate brown tend to get left behind. And that is the good stuff for binding.

Mark

well mark, i might just take your advice on the mac ebony. the guitar i am building is a very dark peruvian walnut back and sides with a carpathian spruce top. the fretboard and bridge are... you guessed it, mac ebony. i am really going for an overall dark appearance with the creamy white spruce top. no purfling at all. i love the way the black madagascar ebony looks, but i will give the mac ebony some thought. any thoughts on the workability of african ebony?

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sweat the small stuff.

you could also try skewing the binding strip across the bender. my bending blanket/bender is about 5 3/4" wide and that allows me to run them at enough of an angle that it starts to compensate for the funky shape we're trying to accommodate for the back. enough so that i've managed just fine with the stewmac binding tape and titebond. mind you, i've just done it this way with coco, koa and eir bindings. ebony will be way more difficult as mark said.
phil

Heath buddy Ebony is one of the tougher bindings to bend but it sounds like you did the bend fine. As Mark said it does look disappointingly just like black plastic once installed and finished.......

I am wondering what the thickness the binding was when you bent and installed it? If you bought it from one of the usual suspects and did not thickness sand it additionally you could have been dealing with .090 thick ebony binding. That would be tough to manipulate around the dome of a guitar back.

Perhaps cutting the channel to something like .075 and thicknessing the binding to .075 would give you much more flexibility.

I just use the Stew-Mac brown tape and find that if your waist fits well in advance tape is fine for binding provided that you fit it tightly all along the way and don't let misalignments happen.

The back is harder to do than the top and since your top went well I suspect that if your binding was more flexible, perhaps not ebony or thinner if you can do so, that you can pull this off with brown tape or strapping tape.

I must admit i have real problems with this exact job myself.
I am very bad at binding and have one guitar here that i can not finish becouse i messed the binding up so badly

I dont think i have ever made a guitar where i did not have some gaps even if they were small.

This is why i do not consider my sellf a pro and would not offer my guitar for sale on the general market.

I have found that binding size has alot to do with it.
I used to cut my binding strips at 8mm wide x 2.2mm thck.
I now belicve this is to big and make them 7 x 2 now.
This seems the make all the diference.

I have got very good at fillling gaps and even i cant tell where gap used to be but this is not a solution i am happy with.

i am fine with tops it just seems to be backs that give me trouble.

Oh well i get better every time i do it so hopefully the next one be better if i follow the advice above.

I suppose every one has an acilies heel and binding is most definatly mine

Joel.

Good advice here.....wooden binding is difficult and the thicker it is the more precise the bend needs to be in order to get a proper fit especially at the waist. If it does not go into place with gentle finger pressure, adjust the bend till it does.....another good reason to bend on a hot pipe or iron. It sounds like you trimmed the bindings before you attached them. I never do this as the most critical fit is at the waist. I carefully slide the binding back and forth at the waist to find the precise fit and then fix it in place with tape and work up toward the heel end using a razor saw and a small X-acto miter box to trim and ensure a square cut. Trimming first may mean that the final fitting of the upper bout can shift the waist bend and produce a poor fit.
Bar clamps should not be neccessary.
Here is my method, I attach the bindings initially with masking tape and then tension with a long continuous strip of seam tape, it is stretchy, but I usually wrap it beyond the stretch so a non-stretch type of material would work as well.
It takes some practice to learn just how to wrap the tape, but eliminates the need for a fixture.

I do something very similar to David, but I use a cotton binding tape that is not stretchy. I think its the same method Robby O'brien uses in his instructional dvd.

I usually start with the back. Do one side, dry fit and tape starting at the waist. Push the piece into the ledge and keep adding tape. Cut the ends with a razor saw. When the first side is completely taped, do the other side. When you have both pieces taped on and trimmed, peel off the tape just enough to release the strip of binding, then add glue and replace the piece and re-tape. I use tite-bond because it gives me enough working time. When both pieces are glued and taped, I wrap the body with the binding tape.

After a couple hours drying time, I remove the binding tape and then repeat the whole process on the top.

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53% of all statistics are made up on the spot
http://driftwoodguitars.blogspot.com/

tons of good advice here guys and it is much appreciated.

phil, i like your idea and i think it makes sense to me. i had to draw myself a picture to try and see exactly what a piece of binding would look like bent skewed across the form. if i am picturing it correctly, this would help in the area either above or below the waist, depending on which way you lay the binding, but would make things more difficult on the opposite side. am i getting that right? i might have to do some experimenting.

the question was asked a couple times and i didnt mention it in the original post, but the ebony binding i was using measured .250 x .080 out of the box from LMI.

david, i did infact cut the binding to length prior to installing it. next time i will make myself a mini miter box and cut it on the guitar. thank you for pointing that out. also thank you for the picture of your binding process. im going to go look for some seam tape this weekend as it will be much easier to get a hold of than the rubber binding straps from any of the luthier supply places. if that doesnt work then ill spring for the rubber stuff.

i do own robbie's dvd, but i dont recall that portion so i will definitely go back and take a look at that.

QUESTION: one concern i have is that since the binding channels are all cut, top and back, but none of the binding is installed (because i cut it all off), if i dont install all four pieces of binding at once, will either the seam tape or rubber strap crush the fragile binding ledges? hows that for a run on sentence?

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sweat the small stuff.

heath,
i think you're right that using my bending method doesn't solve the whole problem. as you know, because of the larger radius in the lower bout, the binding tends to be more compliant there. and seeing as you need to get both the heel and tail joints perfect on the back anyway, you might as well start your gluing by the heel/lower bout and then move through the waist and on to the lower bout.
i usually do it the other way. but if you're having grief, start with the 'stiffest' part first.
also make sure you're using the stewmac tape. the stuff changed my life. strong enough and easy to tear by hand.
and make sure you put your purfs through the bender as well. some builders don't bother with this step. but it's another thing that i found greatly reduced the amount of finger and tape pressure i needed to get things in place.
good luck.
phil

I cut both back and top channels at the same time but always bind the top first to prevent any damage to the delicate spruce edges. I've not had a problem with the back channels, though my bodies are usually rosewood. If you are concerned I'd still do the top first but perhaps you can tape in some dummies in the back to keep all the edges fresh as you proceed.
Best!



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