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I finally decided on the binding and perfling I am going to put on my parlor but need some advice on making my own perfling stips.

I am going to use plain Rosewood binding with Maple and Rosewood perfling strips like the fiber ones that LMI sell. Problem is the fiber ones only come in black or white and they are expensive for what you get. I know I could make them out of veneer but that too is expensive when I am sure I can make my own for a fraction of the cost and I have a pretty large stock of Maple on hand.

I have been able to cut strips out on my bandsaw but the problem is the thickness varies from .050 to .020. I would like to have them around .020 or so but I am not able to keep an even thickness.

I found a drawing for a jig that works on a drill press but before making it I wanted to ask if anyone has a better idea for this.


I found this on a violin forum and the guy said it works pretty well. But I don't want to put time into making it if someone has a better idea.

Thanks
Bob

(Design credit go to Albert W Fischer)

Rob, I have done similar with the Luthiers friend sanding station. Works like the image, but uses a sanding drum. For what it is worth, I abandoned the attempts to make purfling (unless it is something not available). I was never able to make them in the quality that can be bought from LMI and all the other folks. You might be more successful, I hope so.

The way the big boys make purfs is to take sheets of maple veneer and black fiber and laminate them. Then they use an industrial tool called a slicer that cuts the payed up sandwich into the size that you want.
I too have wanted to make my own multi line purfs but that slicing tool is out of reach for me. I have thought you may be able to cut the veneers carefully with a table saw and a fret slotting blade with some sort of sled to hold the layer up sandwich.

I've laid up rosewood/holly/rosewood perfs on my bending form and then sliced the prebent perflings on the table saw. I cut them an eighth inch thick so it is a little wasteful, but still cheaper than store bought. You have to raise the blade up high and use a fine tooth blade, and if a piece goes south , let it go, rather than trying to catch it.

You might want to figure out why you can't slice to a consistent thickness. I've been able to make 0.67 mm (0.025") slices of mahogany to laminate up into linings. I joint an edge on the large board, then slice off a strip and end up with strips ~0.8 mm (0.31") thick with one side rough. I then plane or sand off the roughness (carefully) to get consistent strips around 0.7 mm (0.028") thick. Not too hard, but it does take some time to sand off the roughness and end up with consistent strips. With a good sharp blade in your bandsaw, a good bandsaw setup (blade square to table, adjusted for drift, etc.), a featherboard to apply consisten pressure of the board against the fence, and reasonable technique you should get nice consistent slices.

It sounds like your bandsaw might not be perfectly adjusted for blade drift or you're not holding the board consistently against the fence. Your board might also be twisted or not jointed straight.

I've done what Clay S. did for his purflings, and it isn't too wasteful. Cut strips of veneer about 3" wide, laminate them in a bending form, and then slice purfling strips off the bent lamination. You can cut the 3" wide veneers youself instead of purchasing the veneers, but you need to get your bandsaw performance up.

I remember seeing a tutorial here once about making a jig with a razor blade to cut the strips. I think Filippo may have posted it...hmmmm

Well I do have a pretty bad bandsaw it is and old Craftsman 14" so it does leave a lot to be desired. I am planning on buying a new one but I can't make that happen for a while. But I did just tune it up because I had to replace the lower bearings just this past weekend. I am using a brand new 1/8th inch 14 tpi blade. I also have a 1/2" 4 tpi blade but that is too much blade for thin wood. I don't have a rip fence but I am using a clamped on straight edge. I also used my #7 Baily plane to plane the edge I was cutting.

Maybe I will try to redo the setup and see if that helps. If I could get a consistant cut I could run my scraper over it to clean it up without having to figure out how to thickness them after the fact.

Bob

I cut out the roughs on the tablesaw with a zero clearance insert and a fret slotting blade. I start with one edge tried on the edge sander. Aim to cut about .005-.010 oversize. Then I have a sanding block. It's about 3" square. The outside edges have riser blocks of veneer CA'd on. The inside 2" has 100 grit held on with two side tape. I carefully clamp one end of the purfling to the bench, then gently draw the sanding block down the length of the purfling starting from past the halfway point. A couple of strokes, then brush the dust out so it doesn't lift the purfling. Keep going until the riser blocks hit the table top and won't sand any lower. Flip the purfling end to end and repeat. I'm able to get purfling to within half a thousandth of an inch consistently down the length.

@Steven Odut. Thank you sir... I recalibrated my saw and found the lower guide bearing was set about 1/32" too far back. I am now within .007 of thickness. That is acceptable to me for the rough cut.


I now have enough Maple for 36 strips of 32" perfling.... And it was from a stray piece of Maple left over from another project. Nothing better than to save money and do it yourself.


@meddlingfool, And thank you sir... I was looking at how to make that jig but your system seems simple and easy. I never thought about doing it that way. I was looking at how to do it on my spindle sander but I like simple and would prefer to do stuff by hand if I can.


While on the topcic. I have heard that RIT dye is the best way to stain wood for this kind of thing.

Has anyone used that and were the results good? Is it permanent or do you have to be careful sanding and sealing it?

I would like to cut up another bunch while I have the saw set up and want to do some black.


Thanks again guys,

Bob

Here's some pics (I hope) of what I do.
Here's the blocks, dead simple.
The block in action. Pull gently towards you, flip purging end for end repeat. Don't forget to use a bench brush to sweep the dust out every few strokes so it doesn't lift the puddling and make a thin spot. Easy, about a minute each...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Very thin purfling (0.2/0.3 mm) can be done with a very sharp Jack/Jointer plane.
If you don't wish to use standard veneer you will have to slice it. I use the Bandsaw, plane it and then put it through a pull through thicknesser.

Has anyone tried this thicknessing gauge from Lie Nielsen. Blades are available separately so I was considering making one.
http://www.lie-nielsen.com/tools-for-in ... ing-gauge/

Kent

Looks nice, like everything from LN.

In practice, I found that unless the grain structure was pretty great, a blade system had a tendency to break the strips, depending on the individual piece of wood.

Med, SWEET!

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Pat

Actually the LN doesn't appear to be a very good design, at least not for our purposes.
I made one based on the pull through in the McCleod/Welford book. They used a spokeshave blade clamped in a homemade wooden base/holder. I took it a stage further and used the threaded rods, lever cap and adjusting screws from the same spokeshave. It was fully adjustable. It worked OK but was still a pain if you had a lot of thicknessing to do. The best design that I've come across was when someone sent me a pic of the one that Brian Burns (I think it was BB) used. It was a long machine planer blade, set narrower at one end. So at one end it may have been set at 0.8 mm's and the other extreme end 0.5 mm's - for example. The big advantage of that is the easy lead in that it gives. You are very unlikely to get the material jammed. The material jamming was the drawback with my spokeshave method and also other designs that I've come across. What I really needed was a spokeshave blade that was 8 inch wide!

Thanks for all the advice guys,

I messed around trying different things and even considered building a mini thinkness sander but in the end it was Steven Odut and meddlingfool that give me the idea of how to achieve what I was trying to do. My bandsaw needed to be dialed in better to get thinner strips and meddlingfool's idea of the skids.

I found that just putting blue painters tape on my scraper did the trick and I am now able to make perfling in a very short time and in my choice of wood.

I pulled a few 3/4" strips which will give me 3 strips out of one piece in about 10 minutes with my scraper and they are all within .002" tolerance

Simple is always better (and cheaper).



Cheers,
Bob

Nice and simple!

Great that your bandsaw tune-up worked. I also learned a much easier way to sand down the rough side of the strips - I used a sanding block and a set of calipers to sand down each strip, but it was tricky to not get the strips lopsided or uneven. The bridge sander/scraper is a simple beauty that makes life so much more enjoyable

I thought I had another stroke of genius (I think I had one a long time ago)...

I got to thinking why wouldn't those skids work the same on my hand plane... Tried it... Didn't work... The plane blade lifts the strip up into the blade so there is no way to control the thickness.

I did use the scraper to make up a bunch of Mahogany strips and I am eying a nice looking piece of Walnut I have in my pile. By the time I am done playing around I will have a lifetime of perfling strips... I already have enough Maple for about 10 guitars.


Cheers,
Bob

OK, I came up with the fix for the slight inconsistency with using tape to thickness the strips. The tape compresses down enough to give a difference of .002 to .004 in the thickness of the strips.

I had some nylon stock left over from a project I did some time ago so I cut a couple of pieces off and made a saw kerf in them to slide my scraper blade into. I rounded off the edge on the cutting side to .020 radius and then taped them on my scraper blade.

Now I can get very consistent .020 perfling strips and it is reproducible with no effort. The nylon is tough enough that the blade doesn't cut through like it did with the tape.

If anyone is interested I am going to put more detailed explanation in the Fixtures section.

Cheers,
Bob

That looks like a very practical solution, I may well use that instead of making a jig similar principle to the LN one.
I for one would be interested to know how you got a flat bottom to the slot and the exact thickness for the cut/scrape.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Colin, The slot was easy, I just cut it on my band saw using the same blade I am cutting the strips with. It is a bi-metal blade (14 tpi if I remember correctly).

To get the spacing right to cut a .020 thickness Put a piece of 180 stick-it paper on my 1/4" plate glass, laid the original perfling on the sandpaper and positioned the "jig" over the perfling strip. Then I sanded the nylon down until I just touched the perfling. I made sure that the entire radius on the front side of the jig was even.

Pretty easy since I had an original one to use as a thickness gage. The one thing I found out pretty quickly is the nylon pieces need to be spaced just a little wider than the strip you are shaving down or the scraper will flex enough to give you sloppy tolerances. I also found the thicker back on the nylon gives you a good place to put your fingers to apply even pressure.

I also pull the scraper instead of pushing it. That is something I have always done for some reason. I like to be able to see the shavings coming off so I know how to adjust my pressure on the scraper.

Bob

Thanks Robert, very civil of you to respond so quickly.!

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

I made one similar to the one Michael N describes (I think?), from a old #4 iron, a couple of bolts, wing nuts and some wooden scraps. Clogging can be a problem until the strips are close to equal thickness, so it gets tiring if you have many, but its OK for a few. The picture shows a laminated stip being thickenssed on the edge, the more common way is to pull thin, flat pieces of veneer, as you propose. The strips can be pulled both ways through the jig, I suppose the oposite of the way shown is usually best

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

That's the one. The Brian Burns contraption had a blade that was MUCH wider, probably around 12 inch.
You can also hand plane to thickness using two 'rails' at a specific thickness. The plane rides on the rails and the Plane cuts the material/wood placed between these rails. It can get you very close but the pull through thicknesser will dimension to a high precision.