Official Luthiers Forum!

For those of you who have cut binding and purfling channels by hand before, which tools/method worked the best for you? I don't have the luxury of using a router/laminate trimmer/dremel, so hand tools are the only way for me to go. I was considering purchasing a Schneider Gramil from LMI, but I believe that there are different tools for this job as well, so I just want to weigh all of my options before making my decision. Any advice on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Not so much different tools, just versions upon the same theme. I've looked at the LMI, I'm sure it is capable. I'm not too fond of this:

'Use the flat side of the tool on all binding surfaces with the exception of the waist and cutaway areas, where the curved section should bear against the surface. The flat side of the blade should always be toward the side of the material where you want your cleanest cut.'

I think that means turning the cutter around and resetting the tool for the waist area. Not necessary IMO. Somewhere on the net will be a pic of the ancient Strad cutter. If I remember it had a central groove running down the guide foot such that it was resting on two separate points at any one time. A clever way of introducing some stability.
I own the Sloane cutter as sold by Stewmac and a homemade affair. The Sloane is fine although perhaps a little fiddly to adjust with the grub screws.

+1. I use a gramil from LMI, and use the curved side the whole time when bearing against the ribs. Not really any more difficult to keep tangent to the curves of the body than using the flat side. When bearing against the top/back, I use the flat side, but with a small modification... a little wood block taped to it.

For one thing, using the flat side directly, the corners dent the soundboard a bit as they slide against it. Even with the short end, the dent line is far enough in from the edge that sanding it out is not good if you've already got the soundboard thickness carefully tuned. I was planning to grind the corners of the gramil smooth and rounded, but then ran into this second problem... it can't deal with the angled back of a Manzer wedge guitar at all. My wood block has a peak to it, which is the only contact point with the plate it's bearing against. It requires more focus to keep vertical than having the whole flat surface of it ride on the plate, but it solves the dent problem, the wedge problem, plus it's more accurate when dealing with domed plates in general. The peak rides very close to the edge, just inside the binding width.

The photos show the skinny side of a wedge body, where the wood block really shines (ignore the fact that the binding is already installed )

If you can get the gramil to cut all the way through the ribs, the chiseling part isn't too difficult. On my first one, I was splitting the rib material off from the linings in long strips. On the second, I didn't score as deep, and ended up more or less carving the channels freehand, which was much more difficult. Although if you like to leave some rib wood in place rather than going all the way through and having the binding glued directly to the linings, then you'd have no choice but to shallow score and carefully carve. I prefer thicker bindings so I can round them over further, which works out nicely to just match the binding thickness to the rib thickness.

I have the Sloane cutter which I have used for this.
One tool which I made and which proved useful was a chisel file made from a commonly available Nicholsen file (for sharpening lawn mower blades I think) availalble at the hardware store.
Grind a safe side on one edge of the file and using the safe side as the bottom, grind a chisel bevel to create a chisel with a file cut surface on either side.
Very useful for removing stock once the edges are scribed as well as dressing up the channel.

In the Tutorial forum, search for Archived OLF Tutorials. There are several home made cutters in there. Here is a link to mine. I used it exclusively for a couple of guitars, and still use it for some things. I have modified it a bit, but it's still very useful. Cost, a few chunks of HOG scraps, a brass bolt, a piece of brass strip from a hardware store, and a used-up jigsaw blade, reground and sharpened.

viewtopic.php?f=10102&t=13581%22

_________________
Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars