Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi Folks,
I bought some Tortoise binding (0.06) from Martin Guitars several months ago and I was playing around with and noticed it was very dull, no shine and not very translucent. How do you bring out the shine and bring out the transparency?? I tied a little buffing with my Dremel tool and a felt wheel...no luck.
It sure doesn't look like the Tortoise I had on a d-21 many years ago!!
Has anyone had any experience with tortoise binding??
Thanks, WalterK

Huh?

Once you get the finish on the instrument, it'll shine. At least, it'll shine as much as the rest of the instrument <g>

The finish will bring out the colors and everything. You don't expect your woods to be glossy and rich-colored in the rough, right?

You could try this
Take a clean cotton cloth and wetted it with acetone. pull the binding firmly through the cloth pinched between you fingers (wear gloves!!!!!!) this wil slick up the surface of the binding. You may want to try this in a spare or scrap piece. It is easy to press to hard, soften and deform the binding. This will polish the surface, therfore give more translucents to the binding. Now here is the bad news. you are going to scatch the binding a bit during prep sanding so to slick it back up you would have to do it again but this time on the body so care must be taken . It does not take much acetone at all on your rag. You don't want to rub around, you want to pull streight across the length of the binding. You just want to slick or polish the outer surface. The dullness you see is cause buy the surface finish from the factory. They use a release agent in the forms therfore the surcase has a dull finish.

The binding is going to be underfinish . The acetone in the lacquer will help alot. Most celuloid bindings are dull in apearance . Be carefull with the acetone as this stuff actually desolves the binding.
   If you use duco cement this will soften the tortice also so you need to let this offgas a few days before you do any scraping or sanding on it or you will have a mess

Acetone can and will also temporarily swell the celluloid.

Don't do anything to it. Just install them, and when the finish goes on, they'll look like you expect them to.

totally agree with Mario. the celuloid bindings do funny things with acetone.

Mario is corect I was having a brain fart (thinking ABS not celluloid.) OOOPS

Thanks for your advice and help!!!
WalterK