Busted Stuff

"Didn't we just leave this party?"

Some days it feels like I'm just doing the same thing over and over...

Mmmmmm...
Doesn't that look healthy?

In order to fill in the gaps of my poor binding job - I had to over-fill those gaps.  So I started out making another round of binding paste using acetone and tiny pieces of binding.

We're all all fine here...
How are you?

This time around I let the acetone evaporate a little more so that the paste was very thick - almost the consistency of spackling paste.  I then made a first pass on the binding - to fill up the spots that went down to the bare wood.  It looks pretty thick - but was actually significantly less than my first attempt.

Things can only get better from here, right?

After a two or three days of letting the acetone evaporate (and the binding harden) I went back for Round 2!  I basically did the same thing again - put another layer of really thick goop on top of what I already laid down in order to build up the binding enough to be able to scrape it flush with the body.

A sad state of affairs when this can be referred to as "progress."

A mess with a purpose...

I then let this sit for another couple of days (okay maybe it was a week - who's counting?) while this layer of goop hardened.

One step forward - two steps back...

Then it was time for Round 3!
Round three was more of the same, really.  Scrape with the card scraper, sand with the sand paper, and try not to mess it up.  There was one addition this time around and it came from Dan Erlewine of course.  Dan is Stewart MacDonald's spokesperson, main tool developer and guitar repairman extrordinaire.  I have to say - I keep coming back to this guy's advice and it's usually on the money.  He suggests using a razor blade to do fine scraping instead of a card scraper.

Um...
That's not half bad...

Boy, did that make a big difference.  I was having a hard time getting the last bits of binding paste smeared on the wood off - trying to use sand paper.  The card scraper was taking too much off and thinning the binding too much.

The Russian Judge gives it a 7.0

One difference (one of many) between Dan and myself: he uses safety razor blades and I use utility razor blades.  I'm sure that at some point I'll do what he does ('cause he's usually pretty spot-on) but I liked the rigidity of the utility blades for scraping and the results were fairly good.  Safety razor blades just seem to flimsy - but my opinion may change with my level of experience.

Perhaps I shouldn't be so negative...

I'm feeling much better about the binding now.  It's still uneven, sloppy looking, and unfinished but it's 1000 times better than it was - so I'm going to leave it alone for now and move on to finishing the headstock and neck pocket.

That'll do...

 Once I get those two squared away we can finally start digging holes in this sucker!

Pictured: All is not lost.