Boundless

Uh oh.  Dad's got the fringe out again...

I see tape fringe!  That can mean only one thing.  Daddy's gonna have a good time tonight!!!

...ahem...

Sorry. Wrong blog...

But seriously, it's time for more binding (yay!).  I decided way back that I wanted to bind this Les Paul style neck - including the headstock.  So, here we go.  In a previous post, I discussed how I needed to make a channel for the binding to sit in.

57 Channels and nothing on

Also in a previous post, I talked about making binding paste...

Mmmmm... Death Chicklets

The joy of watching plastic melt...

Death Chicklet soup...?

I've also talked at length about working on plastic binding: here, here, and here.

Always the same:  It's picture day and I have flyaway binding

So what more is there to talk about?

Not much.  I just thought a post of nothing but pictures would be a bit boring.

And I thought the blog would be a bit dry without my pithy observations.

Something pithy

But in truth - here's the bit I wanted to get to: The headstock.

Binding the neck isn't really that new and different.  If anything, it's easier than a guitar body because it's pretty much a straight run of binding with no curves.  Until you get to the headstock.

Curvy you say?

The headstock was the reason I needed to bind the neck over two days.  Day one was the neck and the big curves of the headstock.  Day 2 was for all of the little curves.

All wrapped up and nowhere to go.

So, after Day 1 we are left with this:

No, my workbench didn't magically turn into polished stone.

After all the tape was removed we had this: 

Ladies and gentlemen - my kitchen floor

If you look closely you can see that I cut the binding too long - so I need to trim it.

*Blink-Blink*
And we're back in the garage.

Take some snips and cut the binding to the correct length and you are left with this:

That middle bit is going to be a problem

And this:

And this is gonna make the guitar look better how?

And this...

Son of a...!

So, remember when I said there was really nothing new to report about doing the binding on the side of the neck.  Yeah, I lied again.  Lying liar that I am.  What happened here?  

I was pretty surprised myself.  I must have pulled the binding in the wrong direction when I taped it down because I was about a half inch short.  And by the time I realized this the binding was mostly done - so it would have been a real pain to redo.  So, I slapped another small strip on there and we'll work on it.

Lil' bits

Day 2 working on the neck was to affix the little bits.  Now there is a reason I split this process over two days.  To make these pieces blend seamlessly with the larger bits you have to trim, sand, and pre-fit them.

Unless you actually know what you're doing and then you do this in one night...

I started simple with the small piece that goes on the butt of the neck.

Heh, heh.  He said butt!

Then I tackled the top of the headstock.  On a traditional Les Paul guitar, the final profile or shape is supposed to look like an open book.  Which means I'm going to have to do something about that peak in the middle there.

Binding gives you wings!

Since we use anthropomorphic terms for guitars (neck, body, head-stock) this last part here would be the what?  Jowls?  Adam's Apple? Lymph Nodes?

Caressing the guitar jowls
...ew

Anywho!  All these pieces were cut to fit.  And in the few cases where they were not an exact fit - I used a bit of extra binding paste to cover my mistakes.  It's not like that went poorly the last time I tried that trick.

Then I waited overnight and on day 3 scrapped that sucker.

I will mention again that I use both a cabinet scraper and a utility blade to scrap bindings.  This time out I also tried using a 1/4 inch chisel.  Which worked for the area where the nut will go as that is harder to scrap or snip.

After a rough night on the town

After a shower and shave.

Scraping turned up a few blunders.  I kind of thought this one might not be a tight fit as I taped over it.  But until you take the tape off it's hard to know either way.

Heisenberg's lesser-known experiments with binding.  No dead cats required.

And I knew the top of the headstock was going to need a solution.

Pictured: Unresolved issues

Buth otherwise - it's starting to look pretty good

Pictured: Pretty good

Seeing as this neck started out life looking like this:

So, I've had some work done.  So what?

I mixed up a small batch of binding paste and filled in the cracks.
Once that's dry we'll scrap again.

A little schmeer...

And now we wait for Day #4

What could possibly go wrong?

More tools and jigs

Am I a Liar?
Yes.  Yes, I am a liar.

So, I decided to start working on the Les Paul again after a loooooooong hiatus.
I got myself all psyched up to get my hands dirty fixing the neck and neck pocket.  This morning I took the body and neck down from the fridge, took one look at it and decided, "I'm not working on the neck pocket today. " Even though I haven't touched this project in 18 months - I'm going to 'switch gears' and work on the neck.

Okay - here we go...

I had alluded to the fact that I was going to make some drastic changes to the neck in a previous post. Here's where we dig into that process.  My plan is to take the existing neck that I bought from Guitarfetish and add the following:

1. A headstock veneer to match the body
2. Binding all around the neck
3. Replace the existing diamond inlays with standard Les paul 'block' inlays
4. Install an Irish coin inlay (most likely a 1 penny piece) in the headstock

If you've been following along - I finished the headstock veneer a while back.

Today we'll look at how to do the binding around the neck.

The binding was going to be a mixture of easy and hard.  Most of the binding was going to be set in straight runs (with few curves) but I wasn't sure how I was going to route the channel for the binding as I don't own a router table.  This kind of work is hard to do freehand with a router as the neck is curved on both sides and tapered to boot.

After a quick trip to google - it became clear that I had all the necessary parts to build my own primitive router table.  So, first up: build a router table.

Kinda looks like a reject from 'The Lego Movie.'

 The process is actually quite brief.  Take the bottom plate off of your router, trace the outline of it on a flat and wide board (most people use plywood or melamine as they don't warp easily. I used Particle Board which also doesn't warp easily but isn't as durable - it's what I had on hand).

Make sure to mark off where the holes go to attach the board to the router and start drilling holes.  I made a one inch hole in the middle of a sheet of particle board for any router bits to fit through and drilled four 1/8 inch holes for the mounting screws.  I also used a 1/4 inch forstner bit to countersink the screws so that they don't bump into the workpiece.

Once the holes are all drilled - screw the router base onto the bottom of the board, turn the board upside down, mount it to something (I used a black and decker workmate bench), and adjust the height of the router bit until it pokes through the hole.  Voila!

It took almost as long to write this description as it took to make the thing itself.

For any of the more seasoned luthiers/woodworkers out there - this is a temporary router table.  I'm aware that this won't last (particle board warps).  But it got the job done and I didn't have to drop $300 at Rockler.

Anywho!  This particular router bit is larger than the ball bearing on the top - so the ball bearing runs along the work piece and the blade cuts deeper leaving a channel that I can use to install the binding around the neck.

What? Me worry?

As the last several post about binding have proven - I have no idea what I'm doing!  So, we'll see how this goes.  But for now - there is a channel for binding, I have already purchased neck binding, and there's no legal or ethical reason why I can't just bind this sucker at any given moment.

Oh, look... More Binding...

That'll buff right out...

Now that the body has most of the holes routed/drilled it's time to start fixing my earlier mistakes.
When I left off with this build (seven years ago!) the binding was incomplete and in the intervening years it has developed a few additional - oh let's call them "issues."

Looks fine (if you turn your head and squint a bit).

A piece fell off around the smaller horn (and that broken piece is long gone), a couple of cracks have been there all along, a section came unglued, and I never did the bend around the bigger horn properly in the first place.  So!  There's much to do.

Don't be so picky. 

The answer to all my problems.

This binding (unlike the plastic binding I used on the Les Paul build) is made of Cocobolo.  A fabulous wood that is dense, oily, aromatic, and water resistant.  If you have ever tried to bend wood before then you know water is usually an important part of the process.  Not so much with Cocobolo. This stuff is so dense and oily it's one of the few wood types in the world that doesn't float.  You pretty much just use heat to bend cocobolo.  In this case - the same heat gun we used for the Les Paul binding.

Feelin' Hot, Hot, Hot!

Also, because Cocobolo is so naturally oily you have to "degrease" it before you glue it.  So keep some Acetone on hand prior to gluing. Wipe all of the cocobolo pieces down with a rag dipped in acetone. Again, this stuff isn't the best thing in the world for you (according to the State of California) - so don't bathe in it.

Look! I found my Special-purpose!

I can't speak for other woods but with Cocobolo you really have to "listen" to the wood while you're bending it.  I usually use a stethoscope...

I'm sure there is a joke in here somewhere about men "listening" so I'll just let you fill in the blanks.

But seriously, as you apply the heat the wood will very quickly go from stiff to pliable.  It's not a specific amount of time (or heat) but usually it's less than a minute of direct heat before it starts to bend.  If you see the wood turning black or the wood resins bubbling you've gone too far - ease back on the heat.  You want it JUST before that point.

The thing about heating and bending wood this way is that you really need a third hand.  One hand to hold the heat gun, one hand to bend/reshape the wood and a third hand to tape it down.

A fourth hand to photograph it all wouldn't hurt either

If you don't tape the binding down immediately - as it cools it will start to go back to it's original shape.  It won't completely go back to it's original shape but you will lose a lot of those lovely curves you just created.

Quick tip: Don't use foil duct tape (or actual duct tape) like in the picture.  Use low tack masking tape or painters tape.

Like with plastic binding - you can use a bunch of different things to glue the binding down with.  On this particular evening I used medium viscosity super glue.  Since this is a wood binding being glued to a wood guitar body - you could use PVA (Wood) glue and it would give you more working time.
I wanted to scrape and sand the body in the same night as gluing the binding down - so I chose superglue.  Also - it's supposed to work better with cocobolo.   I'll let you know.

Remember to use just enough to glue your fingers together but not enough to glue what you actually wanted adhered.

Mmmmm... Toasty

So, remember when I said use enough heat to bend the binding but not enough to cook it?
Yeah, "Do as I say.  Not as I do."  This is a little cooked.  I'm hopeful the charred parts will scrap off.
Patience is a virtue.  Just not one of mine.

The glue on the above piece of binding has dried and this little section is ready to be cleaned up.
You use a similar process as you would for plastic binding: scrape the sides with a card scraper (or small plane) and sand smooth.  One thing that is different about using cocobolo is that the oils can stain adjacent wood while you are sanding (which it did for me).  I also used a utility razor blade as a card scraper as it is good for detail work.

Pictured: A lack of virtues

You may be able to see that in the picture above the bit on the end is broken.  I tried to force the cocobolo to bend too much too soon.  Take your time and this won't happen.

Oh look!  New problems.

One of the things that you learn working with wood bindings is that if you heat up an old section of previously glued binding for too long - it may come UN-glued.  I'm not sure how you would avoid this (tape the old binding down?) but thankfully it's an easy fix - and in this case not completely unhelpful.  I plan on trimming the two pieces of binding until the meet in the middle. Having them free like this let's me test the fit as I trim them to the correct size.

In process...

 I was able to clean up quite a few of the binding issues but not all of them.
...and I was starting to get sloppy - so I stopped for the night partway through the process.

I'll be honest - probably the most valuable lesson I've learned from building guitars is knowing when to just stop for the night and pick it up the next day.

There is more fiddly work to be done but this body is one step closer to being a guitar than it was yesterday.

Not quite there yet...

Lessons learned?  For those playing the Luthier Home Game (or anyone who works with wood) some people find the sawdust of Cocobolo irritating to their sinuses.  I did. Wearing a mask when using it is probably a good idea.

Cocobolo is still one of my favorite woods to look at.  Maybe not one of my favorites to make bindings from.  But as it's the only wood binding I've tried so far - I have no basis for comparison.
Still, it cleans up real nice.

Getting purdy.

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.