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does anyone have some suggestions for some not to difficult to make or work with purflings? I was planning to not use purflings at all on my first solo build ,until i hear how it sounds, but a dull router bit changed all of that, adding a bit of tear out on the lower bout !

I am working a mahogany back and sides , bearclaw sitka ( martin herring bone rosette),with a rosewood binding . any help is appreciated . thanks jody

Jody, the easiest to work with are the wood fiber products sometimes called fish paper. You can get black, white, b/w, b/w/b, w/b/w etc. They can be bent cold as you install the binding.

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David White, Toronto

"All my favourite singers can't sing."

if your making them at home then laminating 0.6mm veneer works well.
you can then get a veneer cutter that will take strips off for you.
it help is you have a vacuum press for this but you can laminate them together under wieght if you have to.

failing that if you have a bandsaw cut 1mm x 2.5 mm strips from your chosn wood then put them through your thickness sander on a backing board 6 at a time to take them down to 0.6 mm

of course you cant laminate these strips and they are a pain to inlay around the ribs.

the best method i have come up with at home is the laminated venner method.

if its your first solo build go with the standard black white black ones from the regular guys they are easy to work and hassle free.

goo luck,
joel.

Exactly the same dilemma for me here too. I have bound a guitar a few times before but always with wood only, no top purfling, to keep things simple. But I have to do it now for my first commission and I bought bwb fine purfling from LMI, and well, it is too fine. The customer wasn't much impressed with it when I showed it to him. I have a bunch of veneer, maple, rosewood and bloodwood and I was thinking about doing my own 2 or 3 ply.
I think they can be laminated by clamping them with the same paper clips we use for binding? At least for me it worked when I did a few test bits. They also bend quite easily - glued them with fish glue. I assumed they need to be prebent, however, i imagine some folks might be installing right on the spot, adding the binding and the separate veneer strips all at once. I guess it can get very messy.

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Build log

If you want easy to work with, the standard plastic purflings in black, white or laminated combinations of the two are hard to beat. Wooden premade ones aren't much harder either. I also make my own purflings by cutting sheets of veneer with a Olfa knife along a straight edge. I install them as individual pieces on the instrument, sometimes laminated to the binding strips for side purflings. When laminating side purflings to bindings it is easier if you can glue the purling veneers first, then slice the blank into individual binding strips, much easier than fiddling with precut bindings and ready made purlings anyways. Thinning veneer strips for purflings can be done with a simple shop made "scraping plane" made for this purpose.

Oh, and no need to prebend these purflings. I even install herringbone purfling without prebending if the radius isn't too tight.

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

not a lot of builders use the stuff, but i think that full hieght purflings are pretty simple. you can get b/w/b or just b/w from places like lmii. make sure to stick them in your bender like you do the binding.
two big advantages for these is that there less likely to snap when you're handling them and (this is the biggey) you only need to set up for one cutting depth and height. much simpler than doing a stepped ledge. i'll still use the smaller/typical purfs when i want that look, but i sure like the simplicity of the tall ones.
phil

Why not use Herringbone?

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"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." G. K. Chesterton.

herringbone purf I had notthought of, it will match the herringbone rosette, would they need to be bent????/// jody

Jody,

The HB patterns may match, maybe not, depending on what you get. Talk to the people where you got your rosette.

Bending it's not difficult, but if you need someone else to do it, I think LMI does, and Martin sells it pre-bent.

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com