Binding the top

I put the binding and purfling on the top last night. Well...on half of the top anyway. It takes a little time to do, and then you have to wait for the glue to dry, so I only did half. But today, I glued the remaining binding and purfling. Now I have the whole guitar body bound and purfled. The next step is to scrape/ sand/ coerce the binding and purlfing flush with the rest of the guitar body. The binding has to be perfectly level along the sides and the top as well as the purfling so that when I put the finish on this thing, it will look good. If my prep for the finish is half assed, I will wind up with a poor finish. It wont be flat and I will have a hard time getting it to look good. Here I have one half
of my binding and
purfling glued and
taped down. Lots of tape.

Making the bindings flush is done with a tool called a cabinet scraper. Its basically a flat piece of steel that you sharpen on the edges in such a way that it scrapes off little fluffy curls of wood as you scrape it along the body of the guitar. Its a cool little tool that I still don't use very well. I would sand everything, but it would imbed the dark wood dust in the light maple. That would not look good.

Here my kitten is
inspecting my work.
She approves. At least I
think she does.

I sent out my fret board for custom inlay work and it will be back on Monday. So I have to get some things done before I can put the fret board on the neck, and then put that on the body. Please enjoy my pictures.

The tape is off and
its looking pretty good!
Notice the matching rosette
and purfling. Nice!