The horrible process of binding the body
Kategori: Allmänt, Instrumentbygge, tenor mandola
The process of putting the bindings to the body is always nervous - and indeed it was this time.
I make it completely by hand, as I haven't found an easy way to set up a router jig.
I omit purflings as they are purely decorative. But the bindings are vital for the construction so they are a must. I try to have a strict functional design philosophy and keep it as simple as possibly while still estetically pleasing.
The bindings where made of the same laburnum as the "rosette" (also called golden rain or golden chain and 'guldregn' in Swedish). I got a short log from good friends many years ago and have used it as a chopping block. But now I split it with axe and wedges and have sawn and planed part of it for instrument builds. All the "decorative" parts of the instruments will be laburnum.
Bending them was the easy part. I used the same "hot pipe" arrangegment that I showed earlier in this blogg. Here are the bindings left drying, taped to an inside mould:
Cutting the slot for the bindings was a lot tougher. I started with my new home made binding cutter, which unfortunately didn't work too well. The steel slid in its pocket and it also lost its setup for the cutting depth several time. Finally I managed to make height and depth marks around the body and continued with chisels and files.
I didn't document the chiseling and filing part of the project - I was too nervous and there where too many mistakes and errors along the way. I was totally convinced that I was heading for a disaster!
Here is a picture from the glueing:
After glueing there was a lot more work. First I had to make a lot of small repairs. Glueing the bindings where the tape had failed. Putting in small, small chips of wood where I had cut too much or the wood had split. Then it was scraping, sanding and filing until the bindings where flush to the body. To my big surprise it all looked pretty good:
