balooka Posted January 16, 2004 Report Share Posted January 16, 2004 Hi, what materials can be used to bind a fretboard with (close to) 90 degree angles at the neckside? I don't want to make it nice and rounded but straight and clean. Can I bind without having to cut the matirial into several pieces? Whats the best mothod for this anyway, after its installed on the neck or prior to installing? TIA JP Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lovekraft Posted January 17, 2004 Report Share Posted January 17, 2004 You can bind a neck with anything from figured wood and shell to PVC - and you can shape it to any profile you like. You may want to take a look at the "Making A Guitar Neck" tutorial for some insight. For the hard square profile you want, it'll probably be easier to cut the channel after the f'board is installed. Stew-Mac has all kinds of binding material available. If you use celluloid binding (traditional), you can fuse shorter pieces into a single piece with solvent so it fits perfectly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Setch Posted January 17, 2004 Report Share Posted January 17, 2004 It is always (always!) easier to cut the 'channel' for binding a fretboard before it is installed. Why? Because it isn't a channel. You simply make the fretboard narrower by twice the thickness of your desired binding material (that's twice the thickness of a single piece - since there will be a piece on both sides). This is easy as pie with the board unattached, but a nightmare once it's glued in place. Once the board is dimensioned you glue the material to the body end of the fretboard, trim it flush with the sides and then glue on the side pieces. I doubt you'll have any success trying to bend round a 90 degree corner, but tightglue joints with duco, acetone or CA glue should be virtually invisible. . You can hold the binding in place with tape, or pin two scraps of wood to a base piece at the same taper as the board, and push the board between them to hold the binding whilst the glue dries. Once it's dried you can use a flat block and 120 grit paper to flatten the binding on the underside of the board, and a radius block to bring the top edges flush. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
westhemann Posted January 17, 2004 Report Share Posted January 17, 2004 i used a 45 degree angle and did a miter joint.it is not aperfect 45 but you can make the minute changes with a sanding block really easy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
balooka Posted January 23, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 23, 2004 thanks for the info, but I still have another question relating to binding; My top will be 1/4 thick (not sure what wood yet), and I want to bind it. But now that I'm thinking about it, and doing a search for routerbits (here in the netherlands) a question pops op about the height of a binding. Say my top is 1/4" and the binding is smaller (I don't want a 'fat' 1/4" binding on the sides) this will leave some of the tops sides unbound. I want to do a high contrast top/body thing and I now think it would look ugly to have the sides colored as binding/bit of top/body. How do you guys pull it off without ending up with a side thats 3 colors? TIA JP Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Litchfield Custom Gutars Posted January 23, 2004 Report Share Posted January 23, 2004 Natural binding Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest AlexVDL Posted January 23, 2004 Report Share Posted January 23, 2004 Hi, what materials can be used to bind a fretboard with (close to) 90 degree angles at the neckside? I don't want to make it nice and rounded but straight and clean. Can I bind without having to cut the matirial into several pieces? Whats the best mothod for this anyway, after its installed on the neck or prior to installing? TIA JP Here's how gibson does it, and so do I... but if you do it properly and accurate you won't see any gluelines like you see in this pic. You first glue on the little piece at the end, then you file off any excess binding that sticks out. After that you glue on the two long pieces of the side. You could do the square corners without cutting the binding material, but because you'll have to heat the binding, the outer corner will be rounded off because of the bending. I did route binding channels on an exsisting Gibson les paul before, but it's very tricky... you can easily go wrong and screw up your guitar. Routing a binding channel on an already radiussed neck and fretboard requires some sort of template or guiding system to keep the router straight. That's why I prefer glueing the binding onto the fretboard before you glue the fretboard to the neck, just as Setch desribed! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krazyderek Posted January 23, 2004 Report Share Posted January 23, 2004 if it's a ebony fingerboard try ebony binding, doesn't sound so amazing, but it makes your neck look reallly clean cause you can't see the fret slots on the side of the neck, larrivee does this to their accoustic necks and i love the look of them... done properly it'll look really pro, just a suggestion though white would also look pretty cool Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
westhemann Posted January 23, 2004 Report Share Posted January 23, 2004 most binding covers the entire side of the fingerboard....i think i may be the only one that understood your second question Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
balooka Posted January 23, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 23, 2004 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
westhemann Posted January 23, 2004 Report Share Posted January 23, 2004 the side of the top i mean...not fingerboard...typo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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