Guitar Building, the adventure continues...: day 11, 12, Binding and bonding with Justin!

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Binding bound

Ok Kids here we are day 11 and 12 I believe , there all a blur at this point, the commuting is having its toll!
Ed suggested to bring Justin in to help me with this point of the project as Justin is an incredible Binder and guitar builder, before he worked in repairs at Martin Guitars he was a binder there and could do up to 25 guitars in a day!.
I have chosen a wood binding which is much harder to do and really needed his expertise.
I first started with bending the Bloodwood as I did when bending the sides,
wrapping the Bloodwood in hot wet rags, getting the mold hot and then clamping them in and letting the mold and heat bend them to shape. I did 2 at a time and they were done.
After this I routed out the top and back sides with the channel the Binding would sit in.
I as in every step using a router was nervous and as usual Ed took the guess work out of it and it went smoothly, Justin was very concerned with the grain of the Maple and didn't want me to have any tear out so we marked the directions carefully on each side, not the quick turn on and go around one way that I would have loved to do.
The router loosened up at one point and my cut was less then perfect, and as everything else at Ed Golden's guitar gallery (I Should say " Chris G's" goldenguitargallery.com ha ha Chris is the best and all the photos with me and many others he took)
there was a way to fix it.
So I am now routed My binding is bent and now as always the FUN part begins, (that's sarcasm FYI) Justin gets me started on the filing of the rout to get the Binding to sit perfectly in the route, this task was long and tedious and I am glad Justin was there to guide and finish up what I did to get it as perfect as I could.
The back side rear bout is pretty straight forward and the front bouts need more work as the angle is different and needs to be leveled and deepened more, I was reading in a book The Kinkead book that he uses a table router and changes the angle for both sides, I mentioned this to ed and he showed me a jig he had there and said It was Danny Browns who hated it and there we have it hand route and then file!. I am still going to experiment with adding a thin wedge to router base to create a slight angle to help get closer to a fitting route and will see if helps with cutting out enough of the filing to make it worth it.

routing top side

checking binding to the route

I am about to start gluing the binding on
Here it takes a lot of tape and thumb strength
It takes firm pressure down and in and pulling the tape taunt.(sorry no pictures here but it takes a lot of small pieces a tape!)


routing top side

Chris grabs an intense view of me routing, we had 30 takes to get the right mood and feeling and proper lighting. ;-)

Justin Explaining The filing

Justin checking my work

Justin Filing and showing a high spot

Getting ready to Glue!

Here we are Justin showing the taping and me being a tape dispenser.

Justin showing the start of taping

Actually before the taping I cut the end of the binding to the center of the back giving a little leeway so when the binding is tight it will still line up straight and centered (which it did woo)