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....used for holding the space of purfling while installing bindings. Has anyone managed to successfully use something else that is cheap and/or laying around the house? It's one of those things that I've always wanted but have just never pulled the trigger on. Now I have time off, want them and don't feel like waiting for delivery.

If you are willing to do some messy milling, UHMW cutting boards don't seem to stick to CA glue and can be cut with a band saw. Not used it for this purpose, but have used it for glueing cauls where I know I'll use CA. Shavings go everywhere, though.

Hi,

I cut slices in these cutting boards from ikea:
http://www.ikea.com/fr/fr/catalog/products/50153123/
It works extremely well!

I've used UHMW, and it works well. It's not too hard to mill to spec with my drill press planer.

yup UHMW is pretty easy. I bought a 2'x4' sheet of 1/8" stock. It'll last me forever and was pretty inexpensive. I have access to a good plastics shop though, I'm sure just using a cutting board would be as simple.

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The 2 most common widths of shell I use are .063 and .098. So, I buy sheets of .063 teflon from MSC. Comes in a lot of different widths and lengths. Usually I get 12" x 6'. I contact cement it down onto 1/8" plywood to make it easy to mill on the table saw. Then I cut .098 strips, so I have .063 in one dimension and .098 in the other. It strips right off of the plywood and you can scrape the cement off the teflon with your fingernail. It is still not cheap this way, but it is easy and is a lot cheaper than buying pieces from the usual suspects.

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We mill HDPE or UHMW to .063" x .0.063" on the tablesaw using a fresh 40 tooth blade. We use several feather boards to keep things in place, so the set-up is time-consuming and fussy...but once it's set, we mill up a hundred or so strips. Any good plastics vendor or Woodcraft carries these plastics...look for a cutoffs bin if you have a walk-in plastics shop near enough to drive to.

The advantage to teflon is how easily it stretches and releases, but HDPE - once speared with an awl to lift an end clear of the glue-up and pulled with a set of pliers to stretch it a bit does much the same thing. I'm looking forward to four of these shell purfling jobs over the next couple weeks...three 42 style and one 41 style!

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