The binding and purfling went in quite neatly. It’s a simple scheme but I think it will look fine on the finished instrument. You can judge for yourself from the pictures. The apparent staining of the wood in some places is where I have brushed on some shellac to stop the white maple picking up dirt or, worse, turning an orange colour from contact with the cocobolo. It will disappear when the next coat of shellac goes on.
The next tasks are to prepare a fingerboard and make a bridge.
The binding is made from sawn veneers of ebony and maple. The photograph below shows a true edge being planed using a shooting board before using the bandsaw to slice off a narrow strip.
Here, a border of maple is being glued to the ebony in a shop-made clamping device.
Below is a strip of the finished binding, bent and ready to be glued into the ledge already routed on the guitar.
Now that the repair that I wrote about in my last post is complete, it’s time to get back to the guitar that I’m currently making. I’ve routed the ledges for the binding and purfling to sit in – a job that I never approach without trepidation since it’s so easy to ruin weeks of work by a moment’s inattention when you’re using a tool whose cutter revolves 25,000 times a minute. Fortunately, there were no mishaps. I never much like using an electric router – nasty, noisy, top-heavy things. But the next task of preparing and bending the binding strips will be easier to enjoy.
Here are some pictures of the last stages of building this guitar.
The one immediately below shows the binding scheme that I settled on – ebony with a narrow band of maple.
Here’s the upper part of the top showing the gently radiused fingerboard and the purfling, the decorative border immediately inside the binding.
I’ve shaped the neck and heel and added an ebony heelcap, again with a thin lining of maple.
And here is the bridge being clamped while the glue sets. I’ll leave it undisturbed overnight and string it up tomorrow.
Finely Strung 