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Sterling silver purfling


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I am making a couple of guitars that will have ebony head plates - possibly in the design in the pic below. I was thinking about routing a purfling channel and using sterling silver wire as the purfling. The wire can be obtained in a square shape or flat strips of uniform thickness from Starr Gems (a reference previously obtained on this site from Clavin - many thanks). Anyone think that approach would be good? I was thinking about no binding in this design, but open to ideas. If the silver is possible, I will have to mitre at points along the headstock, and need tops to do that well. Or can I "overlay" two pieces of silver that have been pressed or hammered? I hope this doesn't sound silly to the gurus. Many thanks for any ideas.

headstock.jpg

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Yeah, but you can't just glue sterling. You would have to solder all the joints first....

With 27 individual pieces of sterling silver in my "Vine" guitar, and extensive gigging and general playing, not a single pieces has even come loose, let along fallen out, so why do you say glue wont hold it??

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Yeah, but you can't just glue sterling. You would have to solder all the joints first....

With 27 individual pieces of sterling silver in my "Vine" guitar, and extensive gigging and general playing, not a single pieces has even come loose, let along fallen out, so why do you say glue wont hold it??

I believe skibum does a jewelery makjing course at school/college or something.

Its probably something he was taught there.

I think it means you cant just glue 2 pieces of sterling together independently, but as your vine has an ebony finger board surrounding the silver, it is glued into the ebony, rather than glue together.

Like i say, i *think* thats what hes getting at!

Matt

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That was what I was getting at.

Basically, you'll have a hard time gluing with anything that will hold the teeny tiny mitered corners together. You might get away with epoxy, but that will be very obvious unless your filing jobs are FLAWLESS.

If you solder, you'll have a stronger joint, but it will have issues of its own. You'd be best off using jewelry solder (silver solder) and a blowtorch, and that will cause all sorts of nasty firescale, even if you use plenty of flux on the area. You'll have to sand that out, and rebuff the sterling before you glue it onto the guitar.

My vote would still be to bend the sterling. Unlike regular binding, sterling can BEND!!! with a good jig, I don't think it'd be that hard to get a nice sharp corner on it, and you wouldn't have any of the gapping or strength issues like you would with epoxy, or all the ENDLESS filing or sanding as with solder.

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What I was thinking about doing is routing a purfling channel and inlaying and gluing the silver wire into the channel like you would do for abalone purfling strips. I would probably use gap filling black CA to glue it in. I thought that would give sufficient support to hold the silver in place since there would be ebony on either side and CA holding it in - I didn't consider that I would have to glue sterling to sterling. I also thought I would bend the wire as much as possible, say around the curvy bits along the sides of the headstock. I can get the square wire anywhere from 0.128" square to 0.040" square.

What I couldn't figure out was how best to make the corners fit at the top of the headstock where the bends are really sharp. I don't think I want to try to solder them.

So it looks like I am down to cutting and filing seeking a flawless mitre, or bending sharp corners with square wire. Maybe I'll just go with plastic binding.

If anything above clarified my original question, I'd appreciate any further advice.

Perry, where's O'Conner - any where near the Margaret River area? :D

Do you barrack for West Coast or Freo? B)

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Guess I won't mention the footie again. :D

Binding is usually on the outside edge of a guitar whether it be the body, neck or headstock. Purfling, in my simple understanding, is on the face of a guitar, whether it be the body, neck (less common) or headstock. Most times I've seen the purfling bordered on one edge by the wood and the other by the binding.

Guess I'll buy some silver wire and have a go. Thanks guys.

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