Official Luthiers Forum!

Has anybody ever used vacuum techniques to attach bindings? I realize one must reinforce the body to avoid collapse, but I am wondering if it is effective.

Mike

There was post a while back or an article in a journal showing a fellow who built a cut out much larger than the guitar body and he positioned it like a go bar deck above the guitar so that go bars contacted the binding area at about a 45 degree angle. This was used to clamp the bindings into place. It seems that there are many methods that work if the builder uses them correctly. It's really hard for me to imagine a safe and effective way to use a vacuum bag.

Mike, do you any ideas on how to keep the guitar from imploding from the press? If a gutar top was 240 sq inches or so, a quick guess on my part, the top alone would have over 3000 pounds on it inside a bag.
I'm interested to hear what your thinking though.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

I agree with Jim, I think implosion is the biggest concern. My press is kind of unusual. It's a ring with a rubber membrane that fits over my radius dish and seals to my shop floor. I also use my press for gluing mdf parts for jigs and cauls. I had been flipping over my radius dish (1.5" thick) to get a nice flat work surface until one day I noticed that all my larger glue-ups were slightly warped. I wasn't sure what the problem was until I ran a panel through a drum sander and saw the contour of a radius dish. The vacuum was compressing the inverted radius dish flat to the floor and transferring that radius to my parts. Hmm, that might be a quick way to make radius dishes...

Bob

I fill my guitars right to the brim with water just before vacuum pressing the binding on.
In the past I had used sand instead, but it's just too messy.

Many builders glue bridges with vacuum pressure. They don't put the whole guitar in a bag. Sealing around the edges of a purfling-binding operation would be more complicated, but I'm sure it could be done. I'd be surprised if some of the bigger companies hadn't worked on this.

You would crush the guitar with a probability of 1

I suppose you could put a bladder inside and inflate it . Then place in a bag and vacuum it. But you would need to increase the bladder presure to balance out the external pressure to 15 PSI. But how would you attach the binding with glue in the first place? If you were building the same guitar I'm sure an rimm clamp could be made but you still need to set the binding and apply glue. In this case I don't see the need to re invent the the wheel when so many ways work that are cheap as rope or tape.

If the bladder was vented to the outside, it would equalize automatically. But I agree, why bother?

I think it's a grand idea. Please be sure to video tape your procedure and post to the tutorial section when you've got this nutted out.

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Allen R. McFarlen
Barron River Guitars & Ukuleles
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Cairns, Australia

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Nick Oliver

http://www.oliver-guitars.com