I'm officially 0 for 2 on binding.
Binding was a major disappointment
on my first guitar, and it came out even worse on this my second guitar
(first acoustic).
First time I used black plastic binding. It bent easily enough while putting
it on, but my ledge was pretty poor, and it would up being very uneven in
depth when looking at it from the top.
This time I used sapele, cut from an extra practice side. I bent the
bindings on my pipe and got them *pretty close* to the shape of the
guitar body (certainly closer than the sides were when they came out of a
fox-style bender). I was much happier with the ledge this time.
Unfortunately, *pretty close* wasn't anywhere close enough. I've got
horrible joints all around between the binding and the body; I guess the
binding was just too thick to be "pursuaded" into place. But not even
that, the joint along the sides was semi-poor too (though not
approaching the horror of the binding-back joint).
I guess I'm going to order some plastic binding and then re-route the
ledge and install the plastic...at least bad joints can be hidden by
dissolving the plastic with acetone.
To make things worse, the end graft was also a complete frigging disaster
- horrible joints and then I sanded down too far and messed up the shape
of the guitar at the bottom a little. I also chipped out some of the sides
outside the end graft mortise with chisel slips. Fantastic! Only thing I
can do there is try another mortise and a bigger (huge) end graft and do
it right this time.
ARRRGH!
Man, and I was feeling really good when I got the box closed up!
