Refinishing A Guitar That Has Binding

[billy mc]

hi, i would like to refinish a guitar that has existing binding on the body and neck. will it be possible to strip the guitar without removing the binding. would heat or chemicals be recommended for removing the old finish under this circumstance. this will be my first project on a cheap used korean made fender fmt .

thanks

[RAI6]

I would say that both heat and chemicals are a bad combination with binding...

Binding is made of plastic (more or less), and you can imagine what all the solvents in the chemical stripper would do.

And once again, plastic and heat usually don't mix very well either.

Didn't someone say that they've had binding catch fire......?

[zeppelinchld]

what kind of guitar is it??? only on cheapo guitars will the stripper mess w/ the binding.

[RAI6]

A cheap used korean made Fender fmt .

thanks

[thegarehanman]

WTH?! Only on cheap guitars will chemicals mess with binding?

That's absolutely not true.

For all intents and purposes, the binding on cheap and expensive guitars is made from the same plastic...unless it's wood . You can use chemicals and or heat, just be very, very certain to keep both a fair distance from the binding. When I'm refinishing a bound guitar, I chemically strip the whole thing, disregarding the fact that the binding is getting melted. Then I just reroute the binding channel, rebind it and carry on with business. Routing for binding and applying binding takes only minutes if you know what you're doing. So you have those options at your disposal. If you're worried about those, then I'd recomend to just stick with sandpaper.

peace,

russ

Edited February 13, 2007 by thegarehanman

[zeppelinchld]

i appologize. i hav used stripper on my higher quality guitars before that had binding, and it was turned out decent, not perfect, but decent, and the binding wasnt that great to start w/ anyways. i ended up painting over the binding anyways. and i didnt mean that if it was cheap it just woulndt work properly, i thought that it is more likely that something would go wrong.

anyways, go w/ what garehan says, he has far more experience than i do and i appoligize again if i gave u the wrong info.