Acoustic Guitar Construction

Tim, the package showed up today (Monday morning). I'll look for the email. Thanks very much.

I fully concur with John P.'s comments regarding setting the binding a tad deep so level scraping thins the sides and not the binding, and I follow how that makes it necessary to bind before any staining. However masking the binding can be a challenge, depending on the choice of stain and the binding.

I recently completed a mahogany neck with a fretboard bound with ebony with a maple lam, matching the binding used on the padauk body. I wanted to stain the neck black so had to mask the maple lam to prevent its turning black and disappearing. That was a challenge. I tried coating the binding, especially the maple lam, with shellac, and then I masked as carefully as I was capable using Frog Tape (which was recommended as generating the cleanest line). After staining, I had a tedious and moderately successful project to scrape the black stain out of those areas of the maple lam where it had defied my best efforts at masking.

My learning: if I decide to stain body or neck woods after binding, choose the stain and the binding carefully. Perfect masking is not within my capabilities.

Just sayin'.