Purfling Plane
Posted: Mon Sep 09, 2019 8:06 pm
Purfling Plane 09/09/19 Will Reyer
My daughter was up this summer from Texas, saw my #6 guitar, and asked me how I made the purfling. I didn't have time to give her a useful explanation as we all went up to Little Traverse Bay with the granddaughters for a week together.
So now that I'm needing bindings for guitar #7 I took some photos and sent her this explanation:
The bindings are the outside wood where edges meet and thicker than the purfling, which is also used in thin lines of contrasting colors for the rosette at the sound hole. Purfling also goes between the soundboard and the binding and/or the sides/back and the binding. Here (photo) I'm trying to make binding out of tiger maple for guitar 7, grain runs up and down and sometimes tears out chunks - won't know until I'm done if they're gonna be useful.
The depth of cut (thickness of finished piece) is adjusted by the wingnut below the table. The plane is a quarter-inch diameter upcut spiral router bit driven at 14,000 rpm's by an old Harbor Freight laminate trimmer motor, protruding through the hole in the plywood which clamps in my vise. On the infeed side at right there's a bent piece of pine holding the maple down and on the left, on the outfeed side, is a piece of quarter-inch diameter drill rod doing the same thing. You of course have to push-feed the stock.
On the back side you can see that the transparent base of the old laminate trimmer is missing the geared depth adjustment, broken, that permitted accurate depth of cut changes, but it's not important on the planer usage so I've got a radiator hose clamp holding the motor to the base. The C-clamp is holding a nozzle from a shop vac to the point of use to keep the chips down.
Also attaching photo planing some purpleheart purfling. Bit here was a straight cutter with outboard (extraneous) bearing; the spiral bits cut cleaner.
My luthier friend here, Kjell, says he uses his drum sander to do this but prefers to buy pre-made purfling. I'd be interested in seeing photos and hearing methods you might use.
This is far from being a splendid and foolproof, no-waste, machine but it was quick and dirty like all good carpenter's fixtures, and I may yet try something better, except at my current production rate, it isn't worth the bother.
My friend Carl, who builds F5 mandolins, tells me Antonio Stradivari was making violin purfling into his '90's, though he says the quality was deteriorating. I got no idea how Stradivari did his purfling but could easily see him making single-use plane bodies with stout plane irons honed scary sharp and just planing out maple, pear and ebony.
My daughter was up this summer from Texas, saw my #6 guitar, and asked me how I made the purfling. I didn't have time to give her a useful explanation as we all went up to Little Traverse Bay with the granddaughters for a week together.
So now that I'm needing bindings for guitar #7 I took some photos and sent her this explanation:
The bindings are the outside wood where edges meet and thicker than the purfling, which is also used in thin lines of contrasting colors for the rosette at the sound hole. Purfling also goes between the soundboard and the binding and/or the sides/back and the binding. Here (photo) I'm trying to make binding out of tiger maple for guitar 7, grain runs up and down and sometimes tears out chunks - won't know until I'm done if they're gonna be useful.
The depth of cut (thickness of finished piece) is adjusted by the wingnut below the table. The plane is a quarter-inch diameter upcut spiral router bit driven at 14,000 rpm's by an old Harbor Freight laminate trimmer motor, protruding through the hole in the plywood which clamps in my vise. On the infeed side at right there's a bent piece of pine holding the maple down and on the left, on the outfeed side, is a piece of quarter-inch diameter drill rod doing the same thing. You of course have to push-feed the stock.
On the back side you can see that the transparent base of the old laminate trimmer is missing the geared depth adjustment, broken, that permitted accurate depth of cut changes, but it's not important on the planer usage so I've got a radiator hose clamp holding the motor to the base. The C-clamp is holding a nozzle from a shop vac to the point of use to keep the chips down.
Also attaching photo planing some purpleheart purfling. Bit here was a straight cutter with outboard (extraneous) bearing; the spiral bits cut cleaner.
My luthier friend here, Kjell, says he uses his drum sander to do this but prefers to buy pre-made purfling. I'd be interested in seeing photos and hearing methods you might use.
This is far from being a splendid and foolproof, no-waste, machine but it was quick and dirty like all good carpenter's fixtures, and I may yet try something better, except at my current production rate, it isn't worth the bother.
My friend Carl, who builds F5 mandolins, tells me Antonio Stradivari was making violin purfling into his '90's, though he says the quality was deteriorating. I got no idea how Stradivari did his purfling but could easily see him making single-use plane bodies with stout plane irons honed scary sharp and just planing out maple, pear and ebony.