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I sure would like to see Hesh do a tutorial on sound hole binding with pictures

                  Red

Yup!

Paul Woolson is the OLF expert on bound soundholes, on a lot of his guitars he uses a bound soundhole and no rosette. They look so classy.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

I may be wrong, but didn't he do a short explanation of how he does that?  Not sure I could find it though...  Nice topic for a new Tutorial.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I've been called a lot of things in my time but "expert" is not among the top 10.
Anyway, here's a little how-to.
This isn't rocket surgery.
I start out with a soundhole patch. .100" thick cross grained spruce.

Soundhole gets cut with whatever purfling scheme is needed. This is done with a router on a circle cutter and just micro adjusted for the purfling shelf.


Then the binding is bent on a pipe to a 4" circle.

All is put into place and "clamped" with tape until the glue dries. Finished product.

Hope this helps. Paul

Brilliant tutorial. Thanks Paul.

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

"up" and "down" with arrows. I don't know why I can't remember which way things go but I can't.

Paul, thanks for the tutorial.

Terry, nice simple circle jig.

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Don Atwood
Arlington, VA

Paul, thanks for the great illustration/tutorial. Dumb question -- why do you reinforce with a cross grain spruce patch?

There is another way to do this that may be easier (though wastes more material).
•Cut a wood ring with the I.D. the diameter of the soundhole approximately the desired thickness of your top plate.   
• Inlay it the same way you would for a wood rosette ring.
• Cut out the soundhole
• Thickness sand the back and voila a solid wood bound soundhole.

[QUOTE=Anthony Z] Paul, thanks for the great illustration/tutorial. Dumb question -- why do you reinforce with a cross grain spruce patch?

There is another way to do this that may be easier (though wastes more material).
•Cut a wood ring with the I.D. the diameter of the soundhole approximately the desired thickness of your top plate.   
• Inlay it the same way you would for a wood rosette ring.
• Cut out the soundhole
• Thickness sand the back and voila a solid wood bound soundhole.
[/QUOTE]

The soundhole patch serves two purposes: 1)it strengthens the fragile soundhole area. A lot of people make small finger braces that do pretty much the same thing but this in easier IMHO. And 2) it gives me the desired thickness of the soundhole to make a full 1/4" binding. I like it when people see it, stick their fingers in the soundhole and think that I've used a 1/4" top on the guitar. Yeah, that would work well!?!
You're "ring" binding would work fine. I've tried that but like the look of binding in that the all of the grain runs in the same circular direction, if that makes sense. Different strokes but my personal taste is for true binding.

Paul -- thanks for the explanation. I agree with you in that I like the look of the way you do it better.

Though if you are binding the soundhole in black -- grain pattern isn't an issue.

Are you simply butt-jointing the ends, scarfing, something else?

Mattia, that joint is not critical at all, it's similar to the end of a regular binding. So what ever joint looks best in your opinion. I scarf them as that's easier for me to get right than a perfect butt joint.