Wood As A Binding

[PrestigeFan92]

Aside from maple, what other woods have yall used as a binding?

[verhoevenc]

Coco, gaboon Mac and b&w ebony, pau fero, ziricote, bloodwood, braz kingwood, pink ivory... Probably others. As long as you minimize runoff pretty much all is fair game.

Chris

[PrestigeFan92]

Eh... whats runoff?

[verhoevenc]

Ops, that was supposed to say runout, dang iPhone auto-correct. It's where the grain of the wood doesn't follow the edges of the lumber straight. The more runout in a piece, the shorter the sections of continuous wood fibers and therefore the more prone to cracking when bending.

Chris

[pauliemc]

Ops, that was supposed to say runout, dang iPhone auto-correct. It's where the grain of the wood doesn't follow the edges of the lumber straight. The more runout in a piece, the shorter the sections of continuous wood fibers and therefore the more prone to cracking when bending.

Chris

+1 to that.

I use a home made steam oven to get the wood binding realy plyable & then tape it in place very quickly. let it dry out into shape before applying glue. steaming the hell out of it makes the fibers realy maluable, you can even tie it in knots if its left long enough. Helps minimise any cracking/splitting. Found this to work well on prety much everything so far.

[verhoevenc]

Then the other methods are pipe bending or a fox/doolin style form-run bender.

Chris

[FireFly]

I use a heat gun blowing into a home made pipe structure with different radiuses to bend on. I've only done maple though.

[ihocky2]

I've never done wood binding, but I watched Norm on New Yankee Workshop do some wood bending using a homemade steam oven. He was bending pieces of 1" oak like they were rubber, so if you have the inclination to build the oven, it is definitely the easier way to go.

[verhoevenc]

The thing is you need a steaming oven for 1" stuff... you don't for guitar-thickness pieces like binding or sides. No need to go overkill when there's easier/cheaper methods we can use. IMO.

Chris

[jaycee]

I used Walnut on my 12 string and bent it over a hotwater bottle

[John Abbett]

I've bent strips on a soldering iron. Small enough to get good tight curves.

-John

[Mattia]

You can use more or less any wood you like for binding. Slighly harder is slightly better, as it'll take knocks a little more easily without denting. I've used maple, padauk, ebony, rosewood, and have ebony, cocobolo, snakewood, bloodwood and koa 'waiting in the wings' for the right project, as it were...