First I filled in the gaps around the fingerboard inlays with ebony dust and CA glue. Once that cured I sanded it all flat and went over it once with some 1500 grit to see how it will look. If I do say so myself, it really looks good. Yeah, if you look real close you can see where the fills are, but anything farther than about a foot away they are invisible. The ebony fingerboard has some light colored grain lines in it and I am still undecided whether or not to stain it black or not. Part of me wants all of the black parts to be, well black. The other part kind of likes the grain lines which makes it look natural instead of formal. I still have some time to think on it so I don't need to decide right now.
Anyways once that was done, I got the bindings out of the bender to get a look at them. Happily none of the broke and the bends look great. They fit the guitar body beautifully with very little effort to get the waist to fit nice and tight. I layed the maple and purpleheart together on the guitar top and decided I just didn't like the look of the purpleheart. It was too wide as a solid color, and the color itself just didn't look good. So I grabbed all the strips I had and started different combinations until I decided to go with plain old black/maple/black lines. Yeah, I know it isn't fancy but it ties in with everything else on the top. I set up the router table with the binding bit and then routed the top and back for the bindings and perflings. I had one very small mishap while doing this. On the back when the router bearing rolled along the neck joint area, I had forgotten that I had bumped the very top with my 3/4" router bit when I cleaned out the side wood around the mortise, and the binding bit followed that little bump. That made a bump in the cut right at the top. This will be more understandable when you look at the picture. Not a big deal but I will have to work with it. I have decided to repair it, I will do a curly maple inlay right at the top of the back center, and possibly at the bottom to match. I have a couple of design ideas and actually I am kind of glad this happened. It gives me the chance to do a little something different.
I went ahead and glued the top binding and perfling strips in. It was really uneventful, it just is something that I had to move fairly quickly with. With this being my 4th binding job, it definitely is getting easier and less scary. I know the first time I routed the bindings I was very nervous. This time it really was a non-issue. It was just another task that needed done.
The binding strips out of the bender. All four came out just fine, no cracks, no breaks.
The fingerboard after filling the inlay gaps.
The top binding and perfling channels.
Here you can see the little oops I had. I am going to cut a decorative maple inlay on the back to fix the mistake. The ding is too big to fill without it being noticed.
The top binding and perflings glued and taped down.
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