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Am getting ready to sand and finish my first wood binding/purfling guitar and have a couple of areas with some pretty bad tear out and some decent sized gaps - 1/16" and smaller. The tearout is in the rosewood so the epoxy filler will probably end up dark enough to hide it from everyone but my (and most of your) eyes.

Do you have favorite strategy or technique that you use to fill gaps? Also a couple of very small gaps in other places that I COULD ignore, but would really like to disappear them.

Any thoughts?

Larry

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Thank You and Best To All

1/16". those are some fairly big holes to fill.

For the small ones, wick a little think CA on the area and then sand. Dust will get created and fill the gaps (be careful of your soundboard, don't let the CA get on it.)

For the large holes I don't think the CA trick will look good. It won't have any matching grain and it will be an obvious fill. I would try to graft a piece in as my #1 choice.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Thanks Brock,

I'll try both and see what they look like.

Larry

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Thank You and Best To All

Larry,

Here's a technique I read about 'somewhere' for grafting.
Take a piece of the cutoffs from the top, back, or sides as close as possible to the tearout. Use a small "V" shaped gouge chisel to cut a groove in the cutout a little deeper than than the tearout. Save the sliver from the groove. Then use the same "V" gouge to cut a groove through the tearout area, but not quite a deep as the groove in the cutout. Use a clear drying glue like HHG or LMI and glue the saved sliver into the tearout groove. Clamp or weight down, when dry, sand down. The sliver should be a little taller than the groove. This may work for small tearouts, and is a good reason to save those cutoffs. Practice on some scraps 1st. If you try it, let us know if it works.

CrowDuck

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Chris Nielsen
Soquel, CA.