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Closed up the box on an EIR OM over the weekend. I have a nice 2x2 board of lacewood I am thinking of resawing into bindings. Anyone ever worked with this stuff? Seems very splintery, and to get the nice flecking, I'll need to flat saw the board. I use a Fox style bender and am wondering how difficult it will be to bend.

Ken

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In a word, VERY! It wants to break at every freckle. SSII might help. It might work better with support. I was bending mine on a pipe, and broke several pieces. I'm getting ready to use it on my #5 too.

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Waddy

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Ken: Concur fully with Waddy. I tried a couple of times and finally gave up. But some folks manage somehow and it does look quite striking.
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

I love the look. Here's my #2 guitar, which, at the time I took the picture, needed more pore filling and finishing.

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Waddy

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I'm allergic to lacewood as I found out recently. It gives me coughing and sneezing fits and makes me feel pretty ill. My father used it for something and the dust was in our shed. It did appear to be a pain to stop splinters.

Thanks for the insight gents.

CZ, Balsa can give me fits in the sinuses and lungs. RW can give me a rash on the arms. So I am certainly not immune to the nasty stuff. I'll grab the mask when working with the lacewood.

Waddy, yeah I like the look too. I am going to see if I can pull it off. I don't have any SS, but I do have a competing product I have used with veneers in the past. Never used it in the guitar biz yet, but this might be the time. I am going to thickness the bindings to 0.08" or thereabouts. If I can get the binds cut out tonight, I can spray them with the softener before I leave for work tomorrow, and try bending tomorrow evening. I'll let you know how it goes.

Ken

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Thought I would provide an update. I taped the bindings along with my purflings together, spritzed them good with veneer softener then left them while I went to work. Got home last night and tossed them in the bender, and they bent with no problems. However, the black fiber from the purflings leached into the lacewood in several spots causing what looked like big ink spots. I probably could have still made the bindings work, but the maple on the purflings was a mess, so I grabbed a couple more pieces of lacewood and sandwiched some more purflings in between. This time I skipped the veneer softener and just spritzed with water and tossed them in the bender. These bindings also bent with no issues. So I guess bottom line is the lacewood didn't really need the veneer softener.

I did still have a problem with my thin bwb fiber/maple/fiber purflings I'll be using on the rims. I have never bent such thin bindings before. Typically when I have gone that thin, I use all fiber, but I wanted maple. When I pulled my bindings and purflings from the bender, the rim purflings were rather washboardish at the waist and at the upper bout. I was able to flatten them out by spritzing and compressing in my fox vise till they dried. I haven't had this problem when bending wider purflings. I guess the best thing to do is glue them on the bindings before bending? I hate taking that extra step, but there must be some better way of bending these. Maybe this is better for another thread topic.



Ken

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Watch out for the leveling/rounding over the edges/sanding steps.

I used some on a recent build and ended up with "divots" in the softer areas of the "lace". A real PITA for me. Ended up routing it off and replacing with a more "substantial" binding.

It had a gorgeous look but the workability was unforgiving.

YMMV.

Hank

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Hank Mauel

Hank, I hear you on the divots. I glued on the bindings around the back last night, and I do have some slight gaps in a couple of spots between the purflings and bindings due to the unevenness in the bindings. I think it will look very nice in the end, but certainly not the same as working with other hardwoods.

Ken

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I used lacewood bindings on my harp guitar. I think dimples is a better way to describe it (than freckles). It will be a while before I do that again. Yet, it is pretty! But a lot of work. It's also soft so be careful when sanding sides after binding is in place. I'd get a lot of the sidework done before binding (tried it both ways and after was much better). Finally lots of epoxy work to smooth out the dimples. Yet done right, it will look awesome. It looks way different in two axes.

I didn't have dimpling problems with mine. Maybe it's because I used a scraper for finishing, instead of sandpaper. I only sanded it lightly with 220, just before finishing. I had lots of little cracks during bending, but they fixed pretty well with cA.

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Waddy

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As Hank and a few others mentioned, the lacewood is a bit of a PITA to work with. I my case more due to the splinters I was continually digging out of my fingers and hand! I didn't find much of a problem in scraping/sanding the bindings nice and level. I didn't experience the divots others had mentioned, perhaps due the sanding block I was using. I do have tons of pores to fill, which will be another PITA, but I love the look. The orangish color goes great with the EIR.

Also tried something a little different with this end graft. I used bwbw fiber/maple purfling and decided to run one bw around the end graft and let the other bw run through.



Ken

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Very nice Ken!

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Waddy

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