Sound Hole Purfling and Binding on Vintage Gibson A

[Chris Vallillo]

Hi Folks,

I'm continuing the ongoing repair of the Vintage Gibson A I've been working on for some time. While waiting on a tapered plug cutter to deal with the pickup jack issue I wrote about earlier, I've begun to work on some of the cosmetic issues on the face. At one time, some of the original sound hole purling was lost and simply filled in with a putty of some sort and "painted" to resemble purfling. I'm removing that and repairing some damaged wood and will need to replace sections of the purfling. Does anyone know of a source for this material? In a perfect world, I'd like to replace it with a correct match. It's black, white, black, white, black and is made of wood, not fiber. See the pic.

I'm also going to need to repair the binding on the inside of the sound hole. It's ivoroid with a vertical stripping. I haven't seen anything like either of these at Stu Mac or Luthier's Supply and an internet search didn't locate anything either. Any help in locating this would be greatly appreciated!

[John Hamlett]

The purfling will almost surely have to be made (by you or someone you "hire") from strips of matching wood. Finding a commercially made match is most likely impossible.
The ivoriod material can probably be gotten from Axiom (http://www.axinc.net/). It would probably be easier to replace the entirety of the sound hole binding, and most of the ones I've seen had the grain running lengthwise the material, so that is an option if you can't find sheets of material so you can orient the grain like the one you have.

[Chris Vallillo]

Thanks! I didn't find Axiom when I searched before. It looks like a great source. The do have the material I'll need, but I'll have to get it in a sheet to match the height. I'll keep looking for a source for the purling. I did find Gurian Instruments (the guitar builders?) that custom makes binding and purling but minimum order is 200.00!