Official Luthiers Forum!

Quick question
I am making custom purfling that includes 6 layers of super thin veneer and two thin tiles that are 1/2" x 1.5mm.
All parts are 1" wide and will be cut into purfling strips once it is all sandwiched and glued up.

If I sandwich them all together and flood with CA, can the final purfling be bent in a mold with a heat blanket?

If not, what is the preferred method for making custom purfling like this?

Thanks for the advice,

Dave

I was talking with Haans about this recently. All I can say is he revolutionized my thinking here. I'm talking Larson Brother designs. Where u build up layered logs, then cut on bias, reglue on bias, then cut strips for purfling. Ugh. What a nightmare. What Haans suggested, and I have not tried this yet, is build ur layered log. Then, after shaping to square, cut short strips on bias, proxxon saw, coat in CA, then gently shape/bend these pieces, fit together like shell. Think about it. Forget the bender. Forget long strips.

Thanks for the response Mike.

Tried that already with this and will be routing it off and trying again.

I wish I had time to go down pick Haan's brain on this. He is only 25 minutes away.

Two things:

1. The John Bogdanovich book and videos have pretty good sections on building purflings.

2. I am in the middle of some custom purfling myself right now, and I find it way easier to glue it in the shape of the bend, in a mold or fixture, instead of gluing it straight and bending it later. Two layers of material bend OK, three gets harder, and more is even harder.

I'm no expert, but I'm learning a lot about it by trying different things. Good luck with it.

We must be miscommunicating. Because, as I understood the process, it made total sense. I glue my layers with tight bond, not CA. The CA is for stabilizing the shorts during bend. Maybe Haans will chime in. It might be a lot of hard piece work, but bending long strips of that stuff is a real nightmare.

That looks fantastic!

A few more thoughts, again informed by my recent fumbles in this area:

I figure you plan to have three thin strips, then the tile in the middle, then the other three thin strips; right? Assuming this is so, I think it makes sense to glue your tiles down to one adjacent layer of thin veneer, then bend just that on the hot pipe, then bend the other layers of thin veneer on the hot pipe one at a time, then glue them all together in a body mold.

The body mold thing is straight out of the Bogdanovich book and videos. The bending of the tiles plus a single layer of veneer, but no more, is from my own recent experience trying to make a custom herringbone from dyed wood veneers. Herringbone is a strip of veneer, then a diagonal pattern of sliced veneers (created via the sliced log Mike mentions above), then a center veneer, another diagonal pattern in mirror image to the other one, and finally another veneer. When I tried gluing that up straight and bending it, it delaminated at least one of the outer layers of veneer. But when I just bent the diagonal patterns, each glued to its own adjacent outside veneer, it bent like butter and stayed together great. Gluing together afterward in a mold was easy after all the separate elements were bent to shape on the hot pipe.

I hope this helps.

I guess all I can say is it worked for me. You can find the basics on my website...