Acoustic Guitar Construction

It came up in another thread that there may be interest in a group buy of ZipFlex shell purfling. If you are not familiar with the product, you can check it out here:
http://www.advancedshelltech.com/Produc ... pFlex.html

There was a group buy on another forum a couple of years ago and they got the purchase price down to about $16 or so per strip. Keep in mind that these strips are 15" long and it will take 4 strips to do a soundboard. Abalone from the major supply houses costs just about $20 for 15" of straight strips and require more work to install than ZipFlex. 15" of Abalam strips from the major supply houses costs over $26 for the straight strips.
AST sells the ZipFlex for $20.50 if you buy 30 or more strips, but I know they have lowered the price for bigger orders in the past.

This thread is to gauge interest in a group buy. If you are interested, please state how many strips you would buy, and what type of shell. In the interest of simplicity, lets just stick to the .064" wide strips. Again, four strips will do a soundboard, so 8 will do the top and side purfling and probably 20 strips to do a full 45 style dreadnought.
Thanks,
Tony

Just so I'm clear: 4 strips @ $16 per strip to do the soundboard?

I don't know what the price will be until we get all of the interested parties to say they want some. If we can only muster 20 strips, the price will not be discounted from their website at all. At 30 strips, we would hit an automatic discount, as posted on their site.
But, yes. It takes 4 strips to do the soundboard.

For what it's worth, the shell I just used came from Duke Luthier, $15 for 36" (4 x 9" strips) it is just under 1/8" wide and .040" thick. If you want 2mm (about 3/32") it is $14. You can get curved pieces to for a bit more. Will take a little more work, but is a lot less expensive.

I think the Zipflex would be perfect for doing side purflings, and by the way, one 15" strip will do a rosette

I would be interested in some.

Kevin