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Has anyone used celluloid as overlay material for an armrest bevel? Any advice?

I've got a customer that wants a bevel on a guitar with ivoroid binding. I've always used fiber or wood veneers for these but nothing I can think of will match ivoroid except ivoroid. I'm thinking I could use a .040" sheet cut and softened with acetone to fit the curved surface but I am worried about getting good permanent adhesion between wood and celluloid.

How many arm rests have you done Ringo? I have only done one. I have a feeling most you see are black because it is easiest to fill ............. imperfections in workmanship. The one I did was in Morado and I did more filling than I would have liked. I have seem some done in Maple. Those dudes had a few better chops than me. I would think with the right glue adhesion wouldn't be a problem.

Good Luck,
Danny

You could make the binding "split" and be as thin as a purfling line on either side of a wood covered bevel. Then come back together on the other side of the bevel and go back to celluloid binding.

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PMoMC

Unless you are a perfectionist/OCD in your work and consistently achieve near flawless work (which you very well might do), then I highly recommend using Ebony binding for this instrument. Bevels can be tricky and you will be grateful for the ability to cover up mistakes.

The trick will be getting a big enough piece of ivoroid to do it. Axiom may be your only bet. Last I knew, the one company making the stuff in the U.S. won't sell to individuals.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Thanks guys. I've actually retrofit close to a hundred Ryan-style bevels so I'm not concerned with the execution... my concern is with the celluloid/wood bond. I haven't used it in this application and am a little concerned about the long term durability... I see so many guitars where binding has come loose or popped off it is worrisome. In addition ordering a sheet big enough is a pricey proposition, especially with hazmat shipping fees, so I was hoping to get some reassurance that it's doable before taking the plunge. I may just go with white fiber and tint it until it gets close.

Yep, that's who I'd be ordering from, and a sheet will be about $100 with shipping.

The ivoroid to wood bond is extremely strong, without question. Thousands of Martins have the infamous "pickguard crack" to proce it. They had their celluloid pickguard glued directly to the spruce top, simply by wiping the celluloid with acetone to soften it, and clamping solidly. Problem is, celluloid(ivoroid is celluloid..) shrinks. Forever. That's also the reason we see bindings come loose; as they shrink, they have to relieve that tension somehow.

So yes, it can be done, but no, I wouldn't recommend it.

I can, however, recommend an alternative! I've used fine-grained spruce bindings as an alternative to ivoroid, and you would have no problem also using spruce for the armrest. Fine grain Engelmann spruce bindings look more like ivory than ivoroid does. A little softer than most folks are used to seeing in bindings, but it looks and works great!

Holy's color is great, but it lacks the fine grain lines to mimic ivory or ivoroid.

Using fine grained spruce is an excellent idea; thanks!

Mario, I've seen some Holly that looked so much like ivory it would astound you. I think it's a question of the piece, and how it's cut. Perhaps the solution for James would be to bind the whole thing in Holly and tint to look more like old ivory...

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

would be to bind the whole thing in Holly and tint to look more like old ivory...

There's more to it than the color(tint). Ivory and ivoroid have a fine, faint grain, which holly doesn't have, but spruce(Engelmann, especially) does. Come to think about, white pine would also look great, but now we're talking very soft bindings....

Found a shot of the spruce bindings... Not ideal, perhaps, but it has its place.

Just to follow up, this armrest bevel is done. It was part of an overhaul on an old 00 that included a wedge body and armrest bevel. For the bevel I used white fiber veneer colored to match the ivoroid as best I could... it's not a perfect match but definitely good enough and the customer is happy so I'm happy too. As a side note, one cool thing about retro-fitting a wedge body is that you can change the neck angle when you glue on the new back... in effect doing a neck reset for free. For a guitar that already needs one it adds a lot of value...

Oh, that looks great!!