Handcutting Guitar Binding and Purfling Channels 

I'm glad to hear the video is helpful, thanks for watching! Binding can be a real nail bitter of a time, such a long glue joint that needs to be just right. I definitely prefer to take it slow and steady with the gramils.

Great, glad it was helpful!

Thanks for watching

I have yet to try it on a rosewood body, though I do purfling on my head stocks with the gramils and find they work fine for cutting the channels into the rosewood and ebony veneers I often use. Going slow and sharp blades is paramount, I think the sides would cut just fine, a back purfling channel would be more challenging, but perfectly doable. This guitar is black walnut, I build with a lot of domestic woods, though its currently a toss up whether the next guitar I build will be maple or rosewood.

Thanks for the reply. Please let us know how the harder back wood goes.

Thanks and that is a great question! I just do it that way, so I have never given any reasonable thought to why before now, haha. Thinking about it I can say that I do just that on most headstocks (at least most the last couple years) because they just get purfling with no binding, and doing it that way one has to chisel out the waste. Removing the binding channel wood first and then the purfling wood allows one to simply cut out the wood from the channel with very little if any chisel work. I am not positive, but my gut says it is faster to do in the order I do, and easier to get a clean shelf for the purfling(also less chance of screwing up the inner joint edge with a chisel. Also even with tall binding stacks I do not find it compromises the stability of the gramil enough to be a real issue.

Happy to hear you've found the video useful! I definitely have the same feeling around routing the channels, and getting more familiar with using the gramils has paid off in other areas of the building process. By skinny binding I assume you mean having an inconsistent depth of the channels in plane with the sides, so that when you level off the binding it appears thinner in places when viewed from the back ( or front)? When you cut with the router you are making both cuts at the same time, and registering off of both the sides and back/top at the same time and so as that edge leaves square due to the back radius it gives an opportunity to cant along with the angle and not cutting deep enough into the sides at the top and everything happens so fast it cant be hard to compensate smoothly. the fix is to use a binding jig and/or to have a very small registration surface on the back/top With the gramils each interior face is cut separate, with the depth being fully controlled by registration off the side so generally skinny binding is not an issue except possibly in the waist where you have to use the curved surface for registration. The radius of the back/top comes into play dealing with the angle of the bottom face of the channel. I don't get to carried away dealing with this. Ideally that inner corner of the channel would be perfectly square, in reality the clamping force of the glue up method I use does a pretty good job of pressing everything together and a bit of tape on the gramil where it registers against the guitar back edge can help to cant the gramil up enough to compensate. At the very end you an see the tape (44:53). Alternately you could make two of those wooded faces I have in the video and angle them to approximate the angles of the top and back.

Thanks for replying to me with all the tips. The video is great and once my 2nd gramil turns up here in Australia I will be following it very closely! Yes, that is exactly the skinny binding issue I'm talking about, as you said, with a router it all happens so fast. I actually have a stew mac jig but I've never used it, It terrifies me (as do routers generally). As a classical builder, the way I like to think about power tools in general is "what would Antonio De Torres have used?" I'm pretty sure he would/could not have used a router!

A sharp gramil should have no trouble cutting maple veneer, however there are certainly cuts that are not well suited to a gramil. Are you wanting to cut a single sheet of maple veneer?

That would be a good video topic... The short of it is that I get them most of the way there with a saw, since I leave a lot of extra material normally, then I take them down the rest of the way with a combo of chisels, scrapers and spokeshaves. Paying a lot of attention to the way the grain is running on the top so as not to catch and chip into the body.

The ones I am working with I bought through Luthiers Mercantile International, Inc or lmii.com I saw that Michael Bashkin also appears to sell his own version, though they are not listed on his site.

I can’t believe there are still people who build guitars, you can just buy them at the store! a router can be quite accurate and a gramil can be quite accurate. I disagree that one is hands down more accurate than the other, but personally I find the gramil more accurate (having done it multiple ways), though it certainly takes longer. I suggest you don’t delve into violin making though, for your own sanity and peace of mind.

yes, i do this to annoy lower case people @charlesrichter3854