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Does anybody else do this?

While I'm still new at building, I like having my options open (or call it a lack of confidence ) so I close up the box, without bindings, with a wash coat to seal, fit the neck (bolt-on) on without glue on the fb extension. Then I glue the bridge on with only a thin bead on the trailing edge, and string it up.

This way, if I'm way off somewhere, I'm not sacrificing the finish or binding if something is really wrong, like if the top is too floppy. Removing it or back wouldn't be too painful. The bridge will hold Ok for a while, but with just a thin bead of glue along the back edge, it comes off OK. Then when everything looks good, intonation, etc., I pull off the bridge, do binding and finish.

Seems to have worked for me on my first, and #2 is about there. I was glad when I did it this way on #1 when I was able to bring out a little more fullness by thinning the top in the tail area, something I wouldn't have tried if I'd had bindings and finish done.

One possible downside is that there's not as big a bang as plucking the first notes on a more complete guitar.

Any opinions?

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now known around here as Pat Foster
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Pat, you're not off in your thinking. I'd recoment using hollow bolts to hold your bridge on (stewmac has them) as this will prevent danger from removing the bridge.
I'm not sure what you are gaining from not binding the guitar. I would think you'd know if a top was floppy as you were bracing it up.

I find that the bracing is important to get a good seal around the edge. I've done this experiment on mandolins and the results were that the instrument sounded quite different after binding.

William Cumpiano has his students string up their instruments before finishing. It makes tuning the top edge easier. He argues that you have to know how to remove a bridge anyway so you might just as well make it part of your build process.