wood binding - - - bending and installation

[Robert Hosmer]

I have not used the fish glue for instrument binding (yet), but I have used it for restoration of a piece of furniture.
Got the idea from a furniture maker, and it's just about the only thing he uses anymore for building custom furniture.
This does not make me an expert on adhesives by any stretch, but I liked it the one time I did use it.

Got it from LV, and just followed their instructions.
Tacked up in under a minute, and open time was over an hour. Given the long open time, clamping time is long (min. 12 hours I think.) but no big deal since most of us leave our project overnight and resume the next day anyways.
I can certainly see how such an adhesive would make something like installing binding go a lot easier, especially if the builder is relatively inexperienced or the binding scheme is particularly complicated.

[peter havriluk]

Leaving piscatorial glues aside, and back to binding....

I've been fishing around the vendors' catalogs for binding materials and ideas and I noticed that LMI offers thin cuts of woods which if they were thicker, would be bindings. For example .040" and .025" thick by 32 inches long by 1/4" high. Would laminating two layers of these in place instead of a full-thickness need-to-be-bent binding strip be do-able? Anybody done it and had positive results (or at least neutral, as in can't tell the difference once it's sanded)? Can someone comments on what are the negative results from installing laminated wood bindings? I am aware that I will need to achieve a gapfree lamination or I'll have a mess on my hands. I am not an engineer trying to re-invent something that doesn't need re-inventing, but I am trying to think my way through my first binding project wherein I have no bender and I'd like to use wood, and I'm curious if using a lamination can let me apply a wood binding without using a side bender, which I don't have yet. A bit worrying is that I've not seen this approach to binding discussed, and it may well be that nobody who knows what he's doing would attempt something that dumb. I dunno.

Advice, comments, thoughts, will be much appreciated.

Thanks, folks.

[ken cierp]

Common practice -- just use a slow drying glue. The way I do it and recommned is to do all the layers at the same time. Use a brush to apply the glue to each layer as you go. Double -- triple --- quadruple check alignment to make sure all is seated and laminated when apply binding tape. This is not recommend as the first binding go around -- I'd advise to save for a future build.

[Dave Bagwill]

+1 to what Ken said.

[peter havriluk]

Ken, thanks for the advice and voice of experience.

[peter havriluk]

Back to (over)thinking my laminated bindings...is there any sense to my using the binding channel as a pattern/mold, and make up my laminated binding in place but not cement the lamination in place until it's dried and resembles a bent-to-shape one piece binding? The installation task then would be the same as installing a pre-bent binding. I'm trying to see if I can break the process down into some sequential steps and avoid committing myself to a whole lot of one-armed-paperhangar activity with a laminated binding.

[Dave Bagwill]

I've never thought of it that way, Peter, but if you could line your channels with clear packing tape, you could then lay in your lamination strips and glue them together in place, tape them to the instrument until the glue is dry, then remove them, remove the packing tape, and glue them right in. You would have to allow for the thickness of the tape, if the idea is feasible at all.