laminating bindings rant and question

[Brian Evans]

So I know this is my first time and all, but is it really this much of a PITA to laminate plastic bindings? I got the Stewmac laminator tool, I got the bindings from them as well, and I followed the directions to a tee. I am doing 1/4" tall .060 white, .020 black, .020 white, and then on the bottom adding .020 black and .020 white for a final size of .290" tall and .100" wide nominal. I did the tall three way laminate first, and had a lot of scraping to do to clean up the edges - it's like there was a lot of ooze-out. I then laminated the smaller bottom section on it's own, of two 1/4" wide strips the way the instructions with the tool said to do. Again lots of clean up. Then I laminated the thin strip to the bottom of the thick strip, and mucho mucho cleanup, not to mention having to scrape away the excess. Is that really how this is done? Like 2 hours over three days to get one strip of binding? You do the first lamination on the two sections, wait 24 hours, do a lot of cleanup then laminate them together, wait 24 hours, then do a lot more cleanup, then you repair a couple of sections that came loose in the clean up, then you wait 24 hours, then you clean it up and THEN you get to start fitting it to the guitar? Man oh man, I hope I am doing something wrong...

Brian

[Barry Daniels]

Sounds like you are doing it wrong. Do not laminate short pieces next to tall ones ending up with a staggered piece that does not bend well. Most everything can be glued in loose, except for the bottom purflings, which should be laminated to the tall binding. But the inner purflings that show on the top should be glued in loose.

[Brian Evans]

I'd doing exactly to the letter what is suggested in the directions from stewmac. I'm putting together a .100" by .290" single binding with no purflings. It's just messy looking and a whole lot of scraping to clean up the ooze from the actetone. Not wanting to try to glue in five separate pieces of binding loose at once is exactly why I am going with laminating them into one piece, exactly per the stew mac instructions, in the first place.

[Barry Daniels]

It is going to be hard to bend.

[David King]

Stewmac had a video last year of laminating the bindings to the requisite curve by routing the curved channels into a HDPE or LDPE cutting board and stacking them in there to glue them up.
http://www.stewmac.com/How-To/Online_Re ... g_jig.html
If squeeze-out is a problem maybe try CA?

[Brian Evans]

Well, the job is done and it came out on the better side of OK, maybe not as good as "good" - I'll be able to judge better after I scrape everything level and flush. Using the acetone to laminate the plastic binding simply created squeeze-out particularly of the black .020" strips that create the contrast to the white. It cleans up by scraping with a razor blade or cabinet scraper reasonably easily, it's just more than I expected and kind of daunting to see your bindings looking so rough in the middle of the process. My end laminate - white/black/white with a side purfing of black/white came out quite nicely, and bent into the waist curve with just a touch of heat. I did not do top purfling. I will look at ways of doing it with separate pieces next time. I used tape to set the binding onto the guitar and super-glued it in place, as demonstrated in the archives here by Bill Collings.

[David King]

Brian, I'm glad it ended well. I'll look forward to seeing the finished product.

[Michael Lewis]

Someone should look up the old video by Bob Benedetto. He shows installing the bindings loose and all at once. It takes a bit of practice but once you understand the issues that are inherent to the process you can make decent progress. I admit it can be an intimidating process, especially when putting in multiple purflings.

You can do the binding process in steps: put in the purfling in the top and let it dry, then put in the main binding with or without the purfling accent at the bottom edge.

One caution regarding "lots of squeeze out", that means you have a lot of solvent there, which can be absorbed into the plastic binding and cause it to swell and soften. LET IT DRY BEFORE SCRAPING LEVEL. You should make sure the binding is good and hard, NOT SOFT, otherwise just wait until it is no longer soft to scrape. Swollen bindings will eventually shrink, so make them do that before scraping or you will get dips and hollows where you really don't want them. If you find a soft area just set it all aside for a few days and come back to check the hardness. If you scrape too early you will regret it. Here, patience is a virtue.

If you don't want to wait to scrape the bindings then learn how to avoid causing the soft areas. This goes to cleanness and evenness of the ledges and bindings, your technique for gluing them in place, the amount of glue you use, and how well you get the bindings fully into the ledges and held there to dry. It is not rocket science but it does take your focus and intent to make it happen.

[Brian Evans]

Just to put this thread to bed for posterity, it case someone searches on laminating bindings or rants or something, here is how they turned out. I hand-cut the upper channel with shop-made gramils, one set at .090 for depth and one at .290 for height, and finished with chisel and file. I laminated the .250" tall .060 white/.020 black and .020 white together with the Stewmac laminating tool and acetone, and scraped clean. I laminated the side purfling .250" by .020 black and .020 white separately, scraped them clean, and laminated that to the bottom of the first set again with acetone and the Stewmac tool, and scraped it all clean and flush. This left me with a single three layer binding, two layer side purfling piece that was .100' thick and .290" tall. This I fit to the side channel very closely, using a little bit of heat to get the waist and upper bout curves perfectly matching the channel, and taped tightly every couple of inches. I had previously wash-coated the channel, the sides and the top with shellac for protection and so the CA glue would not soak into the end grain of the curly redwood top. With the binding tight in the channel I wicked the thin viscosity CA glue into the spaces between the tape, trying hard not to get glue under the tape (it sticks down very hard and is quite difficult to scrape off cleanly). I applied the CA glue to a small section at a time and I pressed the binding hard into the channel just as the glue was setting. I started with the waist of one side, went up to the neck on that side, then went all the way around the guitar to the other side, the idea being that any slack in the fit of the binding would work it's way around the guitar. I used 60" long binding so there is no tail seam. After all was done, I scraped flush and job was done. What I subsequently found was that I should have left the final flush scraping until after all the colour coats were on the guitar, because scraping the colour (in my case alcohol based dye) off the bindings left them a little under the plane of the body sides.

[John Mueller]

It looks good in that Picture. I've seen much worse in stores.