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.

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.