Producing purfling - ideas?

[Doug Shaker]

For the guitar that I am working on, I want the purfling to be 2mm of reconstituted stone (jade) next to the binding and then another 2mm of walnut between the jade and the main part of the soundboard.

I have the jade, but plan to make the 2mm walnut strip. I am thinking about how to make the 2mm strips. Right now, I am planning on ripping 2.5 mm strips from some scraps of walnut and then thinning them to size using a small rotary sanding station (The "Luthier's Friend" system).

Does anyone have any other and possible better ways of making relatively small strips of purfling material?

[Bart Minnebo]

hey Doug,

I use a cabinet scraper, I put two strips of wood of the same thickness as the binding/purfling I need on the sole. Goes fast and no risk of scraping too thin.

[Dan Miller]

I made one of these:

[Steve Senseney]

I made similar scraper. Slightly different design.

It does work, but sometimes it will catch and pull a chunk. Mine has a little give in the bottom area, and this allows the system to tolerate slight irregularity in the wood.

Recently, I made a bow (clip bow specifically). These are made using small scrapers/planes which ride on a ridge.

To make this work well (for me), I used a piece of 1" band saw blade (carbon steel) as the blade. I made one small scraper/plane with a serrated blade, and one with a straight blade. The serrated blade worked very well to bring down the wood, without tearing chunks out of the bow material. Then I used the straight blade for finishing.

You might consider this kind of plane of reducing the purfling thickness.

Here is a link to the discussion.

http://www.mimf.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php ... t=clip+bow

[Steve Rolig]

I put a fence on my oscillating spindle sander and slowly adjust the fence to get the thickness I need. No problem going down to .o6 inches.

[Alan Carruth]

I made a similar scraper some years back. As per a suggestion from the inimitable Brain Burns, I used a pair of 12" joiner knives. They open out to about a millimeter at one end, and the opening tapers to about .2mm at the other. You just move the strip down with each pass until you get the right thickness, and the taper is so slight that it doesn't matter. I feel that anything narrower than .2mm doesn't show up well anyway. I found that it works better to use one knife as an anvil, with the edge rounded off, so that it only cuts on one side. You reverse the piece end for end, and flip it over frequently, and, of course, look for the smoothest cut. I don't use this setup much any more, since I mostly lay up wider things and slice off what I need, but once in a while it comes in really handy.

[Steve Imber]

Hi Doug,

I have used a Veritas String Inlay Scraper to make purflings down to 0.2mm. Instead of pulling the purfling through the tool, you pull the tool over the purfling. I set the thickness on the purfling I want with a feeler guage under the scraper blade, clamp one end of the purfling to a flat board and pull the tool over it a few times until it doesn't scrape any more. I have not had any problems with pieces tearing out. Produces a beautiful result.

Regards,
Steve.