It Worked for Me: Purfled Bindings

by John Calkin

Originally published in Ameican Lutherie #106, 2011



Some of these tips I discovered long ago, but I don’t think I ever wrote them down. Some are recent developments. They may seem obvious once you know them, but each one made a noticeable difference in the quality of my work.

Huss & Dalton buys almost all its wooden binding stock from Michael Gurian. It comes prepurfled. The price is pretty good, but you have to buy a whole lay-up, which may entail as many as 100 pieces. As you might expect, Gurian makes up planks of binding stock and then saws out the individual strips. The black in a black/maple/black purfling is fiber. I assume that when the plank of binding/purfling is sawn into strips the purfling is down, and the saw blade leaves a bit of fiber burr on each corner that stands proud of the strip. If allowed to remain, the installed binding strip will sit on the burr, and if enough binding/purfling is scraped away when it is dressed to the sides, the burr is eliminated and a gap remains between the bottom black line of purfling and the rib. Finish won’t flow in there, so the gap has to be filled manually beforehand. It’s much easier to sand away the burr before binding proceeds. After the bent binding is rough-fitted to the guitar, I sand the bottom edge of the binding with an 80-grit sanding stick. The black fiber will turn to gray when sanded, and that color change is enough to tell you the job has been completed. Any more sanding will change the thickness of the bottom line, which is also to be avoided.