And the mistakes begin - Part 2

It looks like a wad.
...of gum!  It looks like a wad of gum.

When last we looked at the binding process - things weren't going well.  

In fact they looked like the above picture.  It was kind of a mess and needed some TLC.

No Sir.  I don't like it!

So I scraped (and scraped and scraped) away all that excess binding goo until I was left with...

@#*%^!!!

Well, that's not what I intended to do.  In my zest (okay, let's be honest - it was frustration) to finish up the binding I was a tad too aggressive with the scraping and this fresh bit of nonsense happened.

A nice fat chip of binding came out - right down to the bare wood.

I believe the word you are looking for is, "Craptastic."

It was about this time that I took a breather from fixing the binding and moved on to plugging the tuning peg holes in preparation for laminating the headstock.  When I came back to this it was with the knowledge that I had more to do and little idea of how to go about it.

So, I did what seemed most logical - I kept scraping...

So this is what happens when you scrape with a cheese grater

The binding now looked marginally better but more importantly - it was flush to the body.  As you can see the area around that chip is thin.  Like super thin - near paper thin.  I'm going to try and build up this area (and fix all those chips and dents) slowly - in small passes.  Like I should have done in the first place.
But since it is also pretty flush to the wood - I can't build it up too much.

Another challenging aspect of the needed repairs is that the thinnest sections of the binding are no longer glued to the body.  Right near that chip the binding has come away from the wood.  The really thin section on the other side of the horn has come away as well.  I can probably wick some CA glue in there but I don't know if I want to risk getting any on the wood.  That's the one downside of CA (superglue) - it seals the wood so it won't take a finish or stain.  We'll see...
Getting CA glue in there will be easier - but I think binding goo will look better.

My next step is to mix up another batch of binding paste/goo and try to cover some of these mistakes.

Let's all remember kids - the reason I'm in this mess is because I wanted to take the easy way out.
There's something to be said for doing the hard part first.  In my case it's that I would be fixing a mistake that didn't need to be made.