Binding Channel On A Compound Radius?

[Uncle Os]

Hey All!

Can any of y'all point me in the right direction? I'm having a heakuva time getting a clean binding channel on the lowest portion of an elbow cut. All of the flat/straight stuff has a nice, clean, professional binding channel. However... That last corner on the elbow cut is tough. I've tried mounting my laminate trimmer on drawer slides... The stewmac dremel binding guide and, of course, by hand. Thus far everything I've tried isn't up to snuff.

Any guidance and or assistance tremendously appreciated.

Uncle Os

[Mattia]

What's an 'elbow cut', what instrument, and what's the problem exactly? I use a router-on-drawer-slides and a vacuum clamp to position the body for my acoustics or for carved top instruments that require binding, and follow the basic routing directions as outlined on StewMac's website: first go from 'peak' to 'valley' (so from wide part of a guitar to a narrow part like the waist), which involves some climb cutting, then finish with a single pass in the 'correct' direction (non-climb cut) to clean up the full channel. Using a bearing guided bit (sized, from LMI, StewMac or whatever) for the rabbet makes a big difference in getting a clean result. If you're using an edge guide of some kind use a spiral bit rather than a straight one.

[Uncle Os]

Elbow cut... Forearm contour, Senor. :o)

[Juntunen Guitars]

Have you tried the binding jig from LMI? It's basically a laminate trimmer on really good quality drawer sliders. It works great for acoustics.

[Mattia]

Gotcha. So yes, Willams/Fleishmann style binding jig with drawer slides and an appropriately shaped 'nose' to ride the contour. The alternative is to go old school, mark it by hand and do it with a chisel.

[Uncle Os]

Thank you so much, Kind Fellow. :o)