John, thanks. I'll probably do the same if this keeps up. I do have some of the cheap ones that I got from one of the big vendors, and they came in sets of 5 or 6. But they burn the edges, even in spruce. That one I did have was really nice and left hardly any tear out. Not sure I can afford 6 at a time on them. :)
Having a really good night tonight. The binding of the fretboard went particularly well (knock on wood).
I first cut the long strips of ebony, and miter cut them with miters at the end nearest the sound hole. I used 45 deg miters on the two long ones, and increased the miter for the piece going onto the end. Since the board is slanted from headstock to soundhole, another 45 wouldn't mate up as well. These came out ok.
To start, I taped the end piece onto the fretboard and let it set for 30 min or more. I then put down some tape under the fretboard to hold the long pieces once I glued the two parts together. Placed them in position, and secured one side with tape.
A couple of minutes later, the other side got glued in.
After letting that set for about an hour, I removed the tape, and shaved down some of the white fiber. It was standing proud of the outside strips of ebony. I am very, very, very proud of the shaving I did on those parts. You can see one very long strip that went from one end to the other on the fretboard. I should frame that, as it's the best work of chiseling in my short history of chiseling. I know that chiseling something like this is stupid easy, but I've not yet become a good chiseler. Working on it!!
Since both the fiber and ebony bindings are taller than the fretboard, I went after it with 60 grit paper to bring them down to level. I have a wooden 8" block from StewMac that has a 16 deg radius, so I used that to bring them down. I then cut off the excess at the nut end, and sanded it all flush. Tomorrow, I'll do the bottom surface.
Earlier today I ordered some block gold mother of pearl from Andy DePaule to put in the frets at the usual locations. Should be here by the week's end.
Part of me says I should have left the bindings tall and used my Dremel with the StewMac base to cut the inlay. But the other side of me says that I probably didn't have the two bindings perfectly placed, and that there would be some tilt to the inlay pockets.
An alternative would be to place a couple of pieces of wood right next to the fretboard and have the Dremel ride on them. The last time I did a bound fretboard, I used white MOP and just rode on the surface of the fretboard. It came out well. Does anyone have any thoughts either way on this?
Thanks,
Bob
