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I've read where Alan Carruth describes the process of re-topping a guitar without having to re-bind, but some pictures sometimes are worth a thousand words, and this photo-documentary of the process on John Greven's website is well worth a look. Go to Extras and then Re-top How To.

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

I have heard about this procedure form Kent Everett on a couple of occassions. I don't know if I would have the courage to try it though. Looks a bit intimidating but possible.

I've retopped two guitars. One I cut the entire binding off, thus making the guitar more shallow buy almost 1/4". I didn't like that approach. The other I cut the depth of the top off which removed about 1/3 of the binding. I then rebound that part and since it was ebony, it looked fine. I'll try this technique on my next one. Looks very interesting.

On a classical one of my students and I removed the back from, I routed the binding off, but only the thickness of the back - then we removed the back by inserting a hot knife between it and the kerfing. Once we reset the neck (thats what we did it for, classical style heel/block combo) we reglued the back on to its needed place, then simply redid the binding/purfling just likea new build - somewhat simpler than this operation. If you didnt want to save the top, and werent afraid to rebind it, then I woudl have routed the top/binding area off at top thickness, replaced the top, then redo the binding as you normally would. Seems way easier than this, but htere is always the " well this is a 40s martin and we dont want to remove/redo the binding. On a newer instrument, I would say its got to go !!! Actually, I would say, you need to take her somewheres else, cause I aint doing that !!!

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"