Binding the Guitar

So it is about that time to start one of the most beautiful and enjoyable experiences of building a guitar. That is binding the guitar. Binding is used as both an aesthetic piece of the guitar and also to help strengthen the joints of the box. Lastly, it is used to make sure that no gaps between the guitar top/back and sides are visible. For this guitar I have decided to use Indian rosewood, similar to the back strip, and the butt strip. 

The first thing that we needed to do was to route out the binding ledge. This is done with a bushing on the router bit to make sure that the cut is perfect for the entire spot. The picture to the left shows an in-action photo of the binding ledge being cut for the top. We additionally have to cut a ledge for the purfling. This is usually strips of wood that will be added to the top or the back of the guitar that help to offset the binding from the top. For this guitar, I am using fine herringbone, which was used on the Martin guitar that I am following, and also on my original classical guitar that I built. You will see pictures below of the purfling. 

Once the ledges have been cut, it is ready to start fitting getting the binding set to be fit into the ledges. First we have to go back to the bending iron. This is done so that the rosewood does not break as we force it into the ledges. The one lucky thing is that rosewood is very easy to bend. Therefore, this was an easy task. When I was building my classical, I used ebony, which can be very brittle. We had a few cracks that were kind of a major problem later on in the build. But this did not happen during this build.

Once bent, it was time to begin forming the binding to the sides. This consisted of double checking to make sure the bends were in the correct place. Additionally, it was important that we were able to miter the edges of the binding to the butt strip and the back strip.

 To the left, you can see one of the many phase of fitting the binding. We used masking tape to keep the waist in place. This is a relatively time consuming process because you have to be very much a stickler to make sure everything is perfect.


Since the herringbone is a relatively thick strip, we had to make sure that it wouldn't crack when we placed it in the ledge. Therefore, we had to "bend" it by wetting it down and taping it into a form.

Once bent, I first began by gluing in the herringbone. After letting that set up, it was time to glue up the actual rosewood to the guitar. This is done one side at a time.


To the right, you can see the final product of the glue up. We made sure that the binding and and the purfling were a little proud of the top. This was done to make sure that we could clean everything up with out burning through the top of the guitar.

I next began working on the back. Again, I worked a great deal to make sure that the binding was perfectly fitting on the ledge. For the back, we added one piece of white laminate to offset the binding and the Koa.

Therefore, we glued in this piece first, once it fit perfectly. After letting that set up, we glued up the back binding.

To the right, you can see the final product again. It looks kind of strange with all the tape, but once it is cleaned up, it will look great.

Once everything was all set and the glue was all dried up. It was time to take down the binding on both the sides and the top and the back. This was done using scrapers, hand planes and sand paper. It is relatively quick work. But you have to be careful, because you can burn through the binding very quickly.

The below pictures are some that I snapped once everything was all finished.

The picture to the right and left and the first one below, show the top with a little bit of naptha on it. We just wanted to see how the guitar would look once finished. As you can tell, it looks pretty darn good. The one good thing that we had were no gaps, which tends to happen during the binding process.

 The picture to the left just has a detail picture of the meeting place of the bindings. You can see that the herringbone perfectly meets in the center.

On the right, you can see the back of the guitar, with a very nice miter into the back strip.

Lastly, below, we have the top in how it looks right now (before finishing)

 Next we will be working on the fingerboard and the neck. I will get back to you in the next few days. Enjoy!