Official Luthiers Forum!

I live in Alaska, there aren't many bike shops. But I did call a few months ago and they told me that bike maintenance is closed for the season.

Thanks Padma, where is a good place to source these?

Common dude, your pulling my leg.

Ok...try a bakery, or maybe the bank or perhaps a drugstore.

Common dude, were do you buy tires from? Go ask them for an old inner tube.

_________________
.

Audiences and dispensations on Thursdays ~ by appointment only.


.

Look for a Rubber & Gasket supplier in your area. They have large rolls of neoprene in varying thicknesses. They can strip off and cut as many feet as you want to your width.
BTW, the stuff glues together beautifully with CA for splices, repairs, etc.

I don't use rubber for bindings but I do for closing the sound box. Since I own about 9 or 10 bikes I tend to have a lot of old tubes. When ever I get a flat I just tie it to the length. They work for closing a sound box but perhaps not for a troubled binding spot. Mountain bike tubes are the strongest. In the blurry image below you can see the thicker tubes are the mountain bike tubes.

Fish glue is easy. If you have a small gap after removing the tape, put a clamp on it to provide pressure and re-warm the area with a heat gun. The glue will soften and you can use the clamp to close the gap. The glue will re-set when it cools and all is well.

-jd

I recently found in a skip many metres length of some rubber which I think is used around double glased windows. It's really good. Its sqaure in dimensions which means it's very good for getting into tight spots. Not as strechy as innertubes, more like rope.
You can see in the picture from jfmckenna the mdf board under the guitar. Following advise from other, I did a similar thing but with screws sticking out every inch or so. The screws are eally useful to hitch the rope around rather than always going under and around the guitar.
Binding changed for me when I first of all ensured my binding was cut properly (Chris Paulick jig), scraping off a corner of the binding before bending it and not making the binding too tall and using rubber rope rather than tape.

_________________
We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at guitars.

Instead of rope or inner tubes you can use shock cord. I use 1/8" shock cord that I get on ebay. Just search ebay for shock cord.

_________________
guitarsbygiltzow.com

I've used mason twine for ukes, what you dont get in width you get in length, the stew mac tape is nice, the blue tape doesn't have the strength.

Yo padma , you must have a lot of big semi -lumber trucks in your area.Never thought of using inner tubes from big trucks.We have abt 4 bike shops in our small city. nearby.

Has anyone tried to bend the first compound curves that match the profile of your preradiused sides? Then bend binding to the shape of your guitar in a fox style bender? This should give the compound bend that is needed if the first bend keeps its shape!

I place a bit of sideways bend on back binding, at the waist, after bending to shape. It definitely helps.

I was debating whether to get used ones or order new ones. I went with used ones for free from the used tire lot and gave them a good cleaning. I figured- there's so much crap wrong with my guitar already, whats a but of dirt? It's all sealed in shellac anyways and should clean up easily.

Padma- thanks for the advice, I'll never, ever, ever, ever bind another guitar without a truck tire again. What a difference.

You can buy 100' rolls of shock cord on ebay pretty cheap. The stuff with a nylon outside and rubber bands inside. I use 100' on a ukulele so a guitar might need 200'. I use 1/8" on the ukes, if I were building a guitar I would use 3/16". If you need an area pulled in a little tighter take another wrap in that area. Having the binding bent well always helps, so I bend them in the bender and not by hand. I tape the bindings, mico line, purfling in and as I'm winding the shock cord I pull the tape off as wind the shock cord. Then I flood with ca. In may ways ebony is the easiest as it does not show small defects as easily.

_________________
Michael F Smith
Goat Rock Ukulele
http://goatrockukulele.com

Yes, there is a lot of good advice here already, so I'll just commiserate. I get better with each binding job, but I've never gotten a perfect job. It's difficult to do it well. Things went lots better for me when I started chamfering the lower inside edge of my binding strips. My last project has compound curves in the channels, as Padma described. I used plastic binding on this one for the sake of its flexibility, but still have a couple of tiny gaps that I will need to fill.

Padma, thank you for posting that picture of your curved sanding block. The wedge securing your sanding strip is such an obvious solution--but only after you showed it to me! That's a neat trick!

Patrick

I use rope and titebond or ca. The key for me is to rope the crap out of it staring in the waist, working around the lower bout, then the upper bout/cut away. I do one side at a time. If it doesn't hurt when you rope it, you probably aren't roping hard enough!

In case there haven't been enough suggestions about what to use for wrapping the bindings, here is my current choice:



This is a product called Thera-Band. It's available on Amazon. I use fish glue for its long open time and apply enough tape to hold the binding in place without necessarily having the goal of getting perfect clamping until the band is wrapped.

David I/m using fish glue on my wood bindings. But I am using a white flat upholsterers tape . Frankly it doesn/t pull as snug as I would like .What is the whole length of that red thera band from amazon ?? or is it a bunch of short pieces . ?? I looked at the amazon selection very confusing ?? thanks

Ernie:

Here's the link to the 25 yard roll I bought:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FJ ... UTF8&psc=1

Scroll your cursor laterally along the little squares to pick the color. I would probably go to the green next time.

Mummified Guitar.
When I'm using the rope method (not often) I use cotton rope (6 mm) usually intended for the piping around cushions etc. I wet it first , so that as it dries it pulls a little tighter. Works well with glues that have a long open time.

thanks for the tip on wetting the cotton tape michael . david , I checked the green on amazon there are 2 kinds , green at $34 ,and green heavy at $41. I/m guessing it would be the green heavy ???? Thanks forthe timely responses.

You could also try Sisal (as in the fibre). That works the opposite, it gets tighter if you wet it! Another wonder of the natural world.

I'd get the cheaper one. There probably isn't much difference.

Thanks david, I will ask my wife, they use this green stuff at their occupational therapy clinic. I might have some bands kicking around the house , to see how effective they are at pulling in the binding.I like the look of wood binding, but have so far found it a PITA. to install, Need more practice.

I don't have photos of all the process, but you can see here how I use the tape only to put the binding in place before using the rope:



After the rope, which is cheap cotton, I put those wedges (pieces from 8mm spruce tone bars). They definitely add a lot of tension to the rope, but putting them like that they also push the binding vertically, which I find just as important. You can also put then at the surface of the sides, just in case you find that the wall of the binding is not vertical (this can happen if you use bindings taller than necessary, which shouldn't be done). Using the wedges to avoid gaps is like night and day, especially on archtops.