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So it's official. My first attempt at cutting the binding channels resulted in exactly what I didn't want to happen. The binding channel, thus far, is horrible. Too deep into the back in some areas. I suppose I could cut another channel and put a bunch of purfling in there. However, after the quality results I got on this attempt, I'm not exactly brimming with confidence.

I guess I'll have to build the Williams jig or something similar and try it that way.

On the upside, my patience and tolerance for my own ineptitude must be improving. I haven't thrown the soundbox across the garage yet, and I've given myself plenty of opportunities to do so.

Darrin

Darrin, You need to contact John Hall at Blues Creek Guitars and speak with him about possibly purchasing one of his Universal Binding Machines. It is the best setup that I have ever used for foolproof cutting of binding channels. With the confidence that the Binding Machine will offer, you can clean up those channels and hopefully come up with a workable combination of bindings and purflings to salvage your project. Don't ask me how I know!

Mike Franks
www.mjfranksguitar.com

im sorry bro. i completely understand and know first hand how frustrating that is. but dont dispair! all is not lost! exactly how deep and how much deviation is there in your channel? what kind of back and side material are you using? depending on the back and side material, you may be able to fill it in with a like piece of binding from the same species and then reroute the channel. the great thing is, there is almost always a fix for our mess ups... except throwing the box across the room or hitting it with a claw hammer (did that to a coffee table i was making one time. i dont recommend it.). this is your first and no matter how careful you are there are bound to be mistakes. its a good learning opportunity and i think things are going to turn out fine. hows that for mr. bright side?

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sweat the small stuff.

Heath, your positivity is creating some sort of tractor beam or vaccuum or something and it seems to be sapping all of my energy.

The back and sides are cherry. I have not messed up the top yet.

The deviations in the binding channel range from what I would think would be good with a .080 binding, at a depth of .076 to the worst .130.

I'm trying to keep in mind that I'm doing something I've never done before and it's not going to go perfectly. I know I will learn from this too, but it would be nice to have some of it go a little smoother. Sheesh. Why didn't one of you guys tell me this wasn't going to be easy???

Darrin

Whooa, not so fast! Please describe your your tool for cutting the binding rabbet and how you used it. There are lots of ways to do this right, and even more to screw up. Don't just jump over to another system before you have figured out what is wrong with the one you have.

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

If making guitars was easy the everybody would be doing it.

Im on guitar number 6 and I cant say Ive mastered cutting binding channels...even after purchasing a classy Luthier Tools binding channel cutter jig. Its just something you need to work on...each job you do you get better at it and eventually you do it like its second nature.

Dont give up...keep at it mate.

I THOUGHT I had mastered this til I tried to cut the channel on the top of an archtop I'm making.

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My soundclick xx luthier blog xx luthier soundclick

Hi

This might sound a bit naive - as have only completed 1 and on number 2, but could you not remove the top, and linings, plane out the current binding channels and reduce the neck block and end block heights and then refit the top and start cutting the binding channels again? Your guitar would be about 2 mm less in depth but it might give better results?

for me I did OK on the depth, but screwed up a bit on teh width - routing into the herringbone purfling in one or two places - so I feel you pain...

I'm with Arnt. I'd suggest...

1. Try to just think of this as a learning experience
2. Figure out what went wrong and how to correct that - that's where important lesson in this lies
3. Remove the top, have a couple beers, and burn the back and sides
4. Make new sides and back and put the box together with your old top
5. Try again

Your new box will be better because you've had more experience making a back and sides and assembling a box. Therefore, it's all gains, no losses, and you won't be fudging some kind of funky binding/purfling trying to cover up for this mistake.

You're really not that far into the project yet, so starting over - with your top already made - is really not a big deal.

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Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

https://www.dreamingrosesecobnb.com/todds-art-music

https://www.facebook.com/ToddRoseGuitars/

Ive done this on a classical after scraping through the bindings on one side.

Darrin buddy the dirty little secret in guitar building is that nearly everything is fixable.

I'm with Mike, Arnt and the others who want to know more, see pics, etc. We will figure this out with ya - at least that is why we are here right?

And not to add insult to injury being the very sensitive guy that I am.... but what are you doing building in a non-humidity controlled garage anyway...... JUST KIDDING - lets take it one thing at a time my friend....

I think what happened was that the humidity in the garage got so high that the condensation on the guitar caused the router to slip off the side at the same time my foot slipped in a puddle where the moisture had dripped from the ceiling and I gouged it. (all kidding aside Hesh, I know this is important, I just haven't figured out how I could get around it.)

Arnt...I'm usning one similar to yours, down cut spiral bit, brand new.

There were a couple of areas that I think were problematic. One was when doing the climb cuts the trimmer really wanted to lurch as it tried to propel itself along. The second was at the sound port (there as a fix to another oops). I think going over this area moved the trimmer enough to cause it to bite in a bit.

This first guitar is all cheapo stuff up to this point. So regardless if the fix looks good or not, I'm going to finish binding it somehow and try to improve my skills on this one

You might want to take smaller cuts and several passes. Sounds like you are taking too big of a bite for your router.

That, and watch the cutting direction. I go from the widest part of the bouts towards tail / waist or towards headblock / waist, then a pass or two around the whole perimeter. And keep the sides firmly against your registering bearings / bar (a pic of your jig would help) at all times; tip the instrument towards the bit and it will bite!

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

It helps to make multiple passes. Hogging out the whole channel at once is tricky. I try to take .02 or less for the final cut. A quick fix here would be to fill in the deep spots with epoxy or something that will dry hard and re-rout the channel flush. Stew mac sells a sweet little router bit with a built in .06 depth stop and they also sell .06 purfling. Once your ledge is flush to about .08 go around and rout a purfling ledge with this tool (the bearing part of the bit rides in the binding ledge). Then you can install the purfling and the binding and the .08 and the .06 ledge should cover the .13 bite pretty well. Binding is a total PITA but once you get the hang of it you will feel like a magician!

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Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.

Binding is not at all difficult. The secret, if there is one, is in the tools. I have used every setup ever described on this forum and they all had problems until I build the Williams/Fleischmann binding jig. Without a doubt, the best binder, with the most consistent results is the Williams/Fleishmann setup. Make or buy one of those and you are halfway there. Buy the router bit and bearing set sold by LMI (not Stew Mac) and your package is complete. You literally, can cut the channel perfectly, blindfolded and without testing the bearing combination at all. I regularly demonstrate the cutting of the binding channels blindfolded. It just works. Don't waste your time on other setups!

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Sylvan
http://www.wellsguitars.com

i agree with sylvan about the williams/fleishman binding jig... although i have not tested every jig under the sun as he has. i built mine for about $100 or so. you can buy one already built, but this will be much more expensive. and to be honest you could probably build one for half what i spent if you replace the baltic birch ply with something less expensive. i dont recall if you said you have a laminate trimmer, but you will need one with this setup. these two sites contain all of the info you will need to construct the williams jig and add the dave white modification which does not require different bearings for different binding widths.

http://www.dewguitars.com/BindingJig/Binding%20Jig.htm

http://www.defaoiteguitars.com/page38.htm

hope that helps.

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sweat the small stuff.

If you are using a pilot bearing bit other than setting the depth of the cut and not trying to hog out too much too quickly, it all boils down to keeping the bit perpendicular to the side. The places you cut too wide in to the top and back came from the bit tilting in towards the top. The channel is not to wide it is tilted in places. Now if you rand back over the channel more than once it may be wide now because once you were tilted one way and the next bass you tilted the other. The W/F jig eliminates the possibility of the bit being anything but perpendicular to the side.

Now how to fix what you have.

You basically have one choice, because the channel is in places tilted inward. You pretty much need to first find a way to keep the bit perpendicular to the side the whole process. The re-rout the body to a channel width that will accommodate an appropriate width full height purfling + binding that will match or exceed the width at the worst spot caused by the router tilt error.

Re-cut and add another line of purfling to take up the space.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Is there a video of this williams/fleishman binding jig in action? A quick YouTube search didn't turn up one...

Buy the plans for the williams jig. I cannot for the life of me remember the link to the site that sells the plans. Building it will teach you a lot about the process. Practice on junk wood until your confidence rises. Do get the LMI bits... this is very important.

Mike

I bought one of the Blues creek binding machines and boy-o-boy did it solve the same kind of problems that I was having! I would highly recommend that you take a strong look at this tool or one similar. John sells as part of his binding machine a holder that you can adjust to get the guitar on a perfect plane so that the channel is uniform all the way around the guitar. I use this part of the tool to hold the completed box when I am working on other things, not just the bindings. It is one of my most valuable tools in the shop although it wasnt built for the things I use it for it is a really good holder to keep the top from getting damaged while sanding or other things.

One thing that has not been mentioned is the cutter its self. In conjunction with the above mentioned tool, the cutter head and guide bearing (s) are important too. John at Blues creek suggested the binding cutter that is sold at stewmac.

With this router bit with its multi-sized bearings and with small pieces of the aluminum air conditioning duct tape, you can dial in a channel to within very tight tolerances. If you dont have one of these, it would be yet another tool that I would recommend that you purchase.

Now that I have made these recommendations, I feel I need to make a couple of warnings. . One of the problems I have had, especially when the side wood is slightly soft is that the bearings can leave some marks on the side of the guitar no matter how careful you are. Most of those problems can be eliminated by running a strip of blue tape around the entire guitar where the bearing will ride. You have to adjust the bearing size to compensate for this piece of tape, but that is easy to do. The tape also serves another purpose to help reduce tearout that may occur in the side of the guitar when you route the channel. Taking several light and shallow passes also is a big help to eliminating this potential for tear out, no matter what kind of rig you use to cut the channel.

I know there are numerous ways to cut the binding channel and my way, using the tools that I do, is just one of them. By no means do I mean for any of this to sound like "the gospel" in routing binding channels, but what I have described has worked for me to help eliminate the same kind of issues you are describing. I hope you find some value to it.

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Reguards,

Ken H

This is why I like this forum so much. Everyone is willing to help and agrees that just because someone else may not do it their way, it isn't necessarily wrong.

Thank you guys for all your help. I think I am going to go the purfling route, which should add up to .140 and will cover my boo boo. I like the idea of the W/F binding jig based on what I perceive to be its ease of use. I'm sure there is a learning curve as well, but in the end, the ability to remove some of the variables from what seems to be a tricky process will be worth the time in making it.

I wasn't going to put purfling on this first guitar as I wanted to simplify the process. As I have stated before, this first guitar is essentially materials I had lying around. I resawed the 4/4 cherry, the top is a 5 piece top from a redwood post.

Again, thank you all for your help.

Darrin

I think we are sending mixed messages about the bit set (LMI vs Stew-Mac). The LMI version has more bearing sizes and does not need the brass bushing. There has been a lot of discussion here about these issues... search the forum for it.

Definitely research this issue before you purchase a bearing set.

Mike

Danger Will Robinson!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

.140” added purfling +.09 binding =.23”
.09” side thickness + .21” lining thickness =.30 total thickness of rim and lining. Unless the .14 purfling is .06 or less tall and you use a stepped channel you have a major problem. You do not want to rout into your linings if possible and if required no more than .03"-.06" max. More than that and you dagerously reduce the glue joint area of the top and back .