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James--

I've tried both. The scrapers are OK, but not ideal. I could probably get better results with more frequent treatment of the edge. But I still have a tough time working through all of the glue without it leaving some rough patches in the side wood. I suspect that, since I am committing to no power sanding after the binding is installed, I will rely more heavily on my scrapers in the future. I just got frustrated with how it left the wood this time around. And I'm not a scraper newb. I use them all the time.

Razors work OK for me on other scraping tasks, but I have never had a good experience trying to scrape glue with a razor. They're just too flimsy for me, for this specific task.

I use one of the Caruth scrapers on binding. I usually put a piece of masking tape on the end of the scraper that is on the side. I find that prevents accidental gouges in the side.

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_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I won't claim any particular excellence to my binding jobs but I have found one way to avoid sanding or scraping a lot of glue, albeit a somewhat tedious one. After getting my binding channels as perfect as I can, I glue the binding with CA, placing it in the channel and then holding the binding in place until it dries. I do it a section at a time working my way around the body. I don't use accelerator, but that might make things go quicker. It is something you can do while listening to music or in front of a video screen as long as you don't get too engrossed by what you are watching. With a modicum of care you won't have much, if any glue to scrape.
I very often work with laminated sides, so I try to make the binding as flush with the sides as practicable.

Don, if you have a lot of HHG squeeze out to clean up after gluing you’re binding, could you not remove gently with warm water rather than sanding?

I use the Caruth scraper,razor blades,power sanding (carefully) and hand sanding with self stick sandpaper on wood block .

I turn an edge on the razor blade so that it works like a scraper.

Josh—

Yes, that’s a possibility we talked about earlier. I’ll ponder it. The downside is the presence of water at the binding seam, but that sounds manageable.

However, I keep coming back to the idea of masking off the sides for gluing in the binding. I use this trick in other places on the guitar, and it works great. It winds up reducing the dry glue clean-up to a thin line right at the binding seam. This might not be an ideal solution for those who use tape to glue in their bindings, but I use silicone rubber bands. And the squeezeout that winds up on the top and back doesn’t seem to cause the same removal problems for me as the squeezeout on the sides, so I don’t think I need to mask the top and back. I could if I wanted to, though. Using a good quality tape is important; too much tack might leave more stuff to fix on the sides, which is the thing I’m trying to avoid.

I appreciate all of the guidance from everyone.

Sorry, I must have missed the earlier post.

I really like the look of those bands, I gotta get some and try them.

Yeah, I’m liking the bands a lot. They give me the tightest fitting binding/purfling I’ve had so far. I used tape before, and I prefer the bands by a significant margin. They call for building a workboard dedicated to the purpose, but what’s one more jig?

"Using a good quality tape is important; too much tack might leave more stuff to fix on the sides, which is the thing I’m trying to avoid."

You will find the cheap low quality dollar store tape has the low tack you are looking for. It is fairly thin too, so it will interfere less with seeing how the binding is fitting the groove. And it's a dollar...

Well, $1.06, with tax. Thanks, Clay. I'll check it out. I tend to go with a decent 3M masking tape I get at Lowes, but if the cheaper stuff works, I'll go for it.

This morning I thought of this video Stew-Mac posted with Michael Greenfield. Not sure if it's been posted so far, but I want to share just in case. It's pre-binding side prep, which is different than Don's concern, but may still prove helpful to some.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-BfqRi3QCs

Thanks for posting that James. I will have to try gluing some sandpaper to a piece of Kerfkore (which would be similar to what Collings is doing). I can see where that might give better transitions than the usual ROS or rolling pin sander.

James--

Yes, thanks, I had seen that short video before. I have several times enjoyed the longer video about Michael Greenfield, too (lots of footage of his building processes). I've thought about ways of doing something similar to the Collings approach. Like Clay, I might experiment with a kerfed something-or-other. I have some decent pieces of hard plastic that might be good candidates.

All good suggestions on ways of slaying this dragon. Much appreciated.

I’ve done the same thing with several guitars . Honestly what pretty much got rid of
My issue was using a rolling pin sander. Love that thing.
Clamp the body in a troji make pencil marks for witness lines (or chalk) and carefully pull it toward me against the drill rotation.
I haven’t had an issue with this being too aggressive to date.


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Oh... and a previous post reminded me of this. ... w a rps be careful on the transitions ... maybe best to use adhesive sandpaper on a steel sheet for that


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The rolling pin was too aggressive for me. I went back to a 5"x8" piece of 5/8" MDF and various grits of sandpaper glued on. For the waist I use short length of PVC pipe of appropriate diameter and stick-on paper. This doesn't take long. Maybe 30 minutes for a set of rims.

I have a small version (about 1" x 8") of the sheet metal flex sander. Never thought of using a larger one but it makes sense for quicker side flattening.

I started reading this thread last week when I had put bindings on 1/4 of my guitar. finished up and am now cleaning the sides. Thanks for the tip of gluing 80 grit sp to spring steel. I could only find al flashing; but it works ok. New approach makes much better look. Had used scarper before.

Next time I will use sandpaper on flashing before cutting bindings and improve look.

I read somewhere that a luthier could hear differences in tap tone over a 2 week period after gluing up a top...taking this in mind I started avoiding sanding anything glued up for as long as possible and it's made a big difference in issues associated with things moving after you had sanded them perfectly

So this is a little departure from the ACTUAL thread topic, however I feel it is relevant.

During my current build I did what I THOUGHT was a nice job sanding the bindings flush with the sides using my trusty RPS. HOWEVER, I did find that I had sanded too thin in the cutaway area. It wasn't horrible, but I knew it was there, and since it was an area of interest on the instrument I knew eyes would immediately go there.

What I did was concoct a small shooting board using a purfling for a stop. Clamped this to the bench and set my block plane a little thicker than normal. I shaved off 3-4 slices of binding and then carefully laminated those in the place where it was too thin until it was just proud of where I wanted it to be. I used titebond and tape clamped it in place layer by later.

After it dried I was able to carefully sand it down to the correct thickness so that it matched the binding around it.
Is it perfect? Well, no its not perfect and if you know what you're looking for you can see where the strips are but it does blend in really well (better than I thought it may).

To really fix it I guess I would have had to route the binding out again and rebend a strip to install, but for this small area, and being a hobby builder this fix worked for me.

BTW the wood in question was is a figured bloodwood. I'm sure a darker wood would work even better.

To add to Jay's point about using a long sanding board. At least in the early stages when there is a fair amount of material to remove, I use a long (6 inch) scraper which spans the whole side, so scraping both bindings at once. This tends to stop you leaning on to one or other of the bindings.

I move to sanding later and again use fairly big boards.

Still not perfect mind, particularly around my pretty sharp cutaways!

Dave