Official Luthiers Forum!

I know most of you won’t give a rip but I’m always interested in alternatives.

I’ve been wanting to see if Richlite (not Rocklite) would behave itself and take a bend on the iron. Low and behold it behaves exactly like ebony. I would’ve tried the Rocklite product but it’s too thin for my liking. I prefer to net at least .080” after purfling cleanup in the sander. The Rocklite shows up at .070” and run $4.50 a piece. I picked up some scraps of black locally for $25.00, enough to make 4 fretboards, 10 bridges, and 80 binding strips. Looking forward to giving it a go.

The binding in the pic was bent at .085”.

M

Way cool. Glad to see someone stretching out the market on alternatives that work, instead of alternatives that are only used because they are politically correct.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I tried using corian for binding. It was a fail. Corian moves according to temperature and wood moves according to humidity.
I've settled on plastic edge banding for black and white bindings. You can buy enough to make 600 ft of binding fo $70. I've used ebony and under finish it looks the same as black plastic.
I've worked with Richlite before and acquired some scraps that were headed for the dumpster. I made a short front rail for a biesemeyer fence out of some of it. I also made some motor mounts for a friend's sailboat with some. I'm not a big fan of milling it, it makes a fine greasy dust that seems to go everywhere. I will be curious to know how it works out for binding (the corian eventually developed breaks in the binding). I would glue it to a piece of wood and test it in a cold wet environment and a warm dry environment and see how it reacts. Your guitars are too nice to have binding failures.
It seems like a good material for fretboards. In large pieces it is quite heavy, but so is African blackwood so I could see using it for bridges if it can be glued successfully. I've glued large pieces butt joined with epoxy with mixed success.

I have used it on several builds. Pretty much my go-to in place of ebony these days.
I buy it in 1/4" sheets and rip it down to what ever thickness I need.
I also use it for bridges and fretboards at times.

I am generally not able to get ebony to do that...

That sounds like a deal. Where on earth did you get it?

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

Hi Clay,

Where do you get your plastic from? Is it ABS? I used to get it from a company called Leathertone, but they went out of business.

Thanks

I am interested in where people get their plastic for binding from as well. Good question!

Hi Brad,
I bought the plastic edging from edgeco. They were very nice to deal with. I bought a 300 ft roll of 15/16ths wide black PVC, but I believe they also offer ABS. I split the edging , so it gives 600 ft of binding. I also bought white several years ago and still have plenty left.
https://edgecoinc.com/


This site talks a little bit about the differences between PVC and ABS :

http://www.tece.com.tr/blog-take-a-brea ... pvc-vs-abs

Clay, Thank you for the great lead!

I looked high and low for plastic sheets and it never occurred to me to google edgebanding and ironically I was in the kitchen business and have used plenty of edge banding........