Is this binding?

[JayT]

I was admiring some of Diego Vila's amazing work and am stumped at how these lines on the finger board were achieved. Anyone have any ideas? Is it binding? Not the inlay fret markers, the little thin lines I mean.

[ScottR]

I'd say it's binding, There are other ways to do it, but they all boil down to making what is essentially binding....

SR

[Bizman62]

Binding or rather purfling, they're somewhat related and often combined.

That one looks simple but making it may not be that easy! However, there's tricks to make such a job easier. One of them is that you definitely don't carve adjacent narrow grooves for the white stripes, instead you carve one wider groove and use striped binding/purfling strips, miter cutting them at the corners of the traverse bits. Figuring out the order is tricky, the only thing I'm relatively sure of is that the black outline has been the last one.

[mistermikev]

5 hours ago, JayT said:

I was admiring some of Diego Vila's amazing work and am stumped at how these lines on the finger board were achieved. Anyone have any ideas? Is it binding? Not the inlay fret markers, the little thin lines I mean.

wow, that is perhaps one of the most beautiful/simple designs I've seen. 

[MiKro]

@mistermikev, He uses cnc and that is how he did it. The first pic is from his site, That is a headstock being CNCed

Now the process is using a very small end mill say 0.025" most likely the same one used for his fretslots and then adding a pearled epoxy. then cutting it back. See my pic of a lapsteel I did. Same process just on a smaller level.

MK

 

[mistermikev]

right on.  took me a minute to realize those weren't frets.  v nice.

I was thinking in my head... that it must have been some kind of rabbit cut along the edge, and inserting 3 layers of binding or something. 

def storing the idea away for 'sometime'!  thanks for the elaboration.

[Bizman62]

Alike @mistermikev a rabbet and a layered binding were on my mind but as @MiKro said it's been done by CNC.

Is there a way to get similar results with handheld tools and mediocre skills?

 

[ADFinlayson]

If I was approaching that I'd cut something like a 3mm binding channel, glue up some 3 ply binding white/black/white and stick that to some more ebony binding to make the lines, could probably mitre the right angles.of the 3 ply to do the perpendicular bits. I don't think it would be that difficult to do, just quite time consuming, especially to get those right angles inlayed nicely. It's a really nice inlay idea.

[mistermikev]

lot of ways it could be done... I think looking at the example and the fact that there doesn't seem to be any seams where the detail bends at the 90deg... and how deep it is inset... you'd want to make a template to do a channel.  Just a straight edge and the right sized bit. 

as mentioned it would be a bit time consuming.  getting the channel the right width would be a bit of a challenge.

[MiKro]

8 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

Alike @mistermikev a rabbet and a layered binding were on my mind but as @MiKro said it's been done by CNC.

Is there a way to get similar results with handheld tools and mediocre skills?

 

It would be possible using something like a 15* v bit mounted in a pin router with a very straight fence and very straight edge on a flat board. Make a vbit cut deeper than what the width needs to be. Add the epoxy. Then once you radius the board it would reveal itself. The reason behind the 15* Vbit is that it has more rigidity than say a very small endmill that you cannot keep from breaking doing this by hand as the feed rates will vary and possible small inflections sideways.

 

MK