 These photos, taken two days before the lacquer was sprayed, illustrate
clearly the way the bindings and purflings are fit. The bindings were
purchased from LMI (which involved a substantial wait due to backorder),
and are rosewood with a thin holly strip along the edge. The stripe down the center if
the back is also rosewood, with holly on each edge. Purfling is
white/black/white and also came from LMI. All bindings and
purflings were bent to match the shape of the sides using water and the
bending iron. This was tricky at times, as the grain didn't always follow
straight down the binding, and it was prone to cracking. I learned to
examine the pieces carefully before bending to make sure I used the
straightest-grained pieces for the longest sections. I was glad I ordered
lots of additional binding, because a fair amount wound up in the trash.
The holly edge
of the bindings is mitered wherever it meets, as is the
purfling. The tapered tail plate and the corner piece of the cutaway were
made of rosewood. I was unable to locate holly pieces of the proper
thickness to use as light colored edging in these locations, but did
find very narrow strips of maple which were the proper thickness and matched
the color of the holly; the worked perfectly. The mitering where the
binding and holly meet around the tail plate was done according to the
instructions in Cumpiano's book. His methods worked flawlessly, and the
corners are as close to perfect as I could hope for.
The point of the cutaway was probably one of the toughest jobs in the
entire construction, not only cutting a properly-shaped triangular piece
of mahogany to support the joint from the inside, but the finish work
and mitering of the purfling and binding as well. The secret was to work
slowly, and take off only a LITTLE material at a time; the old “measure twice,
cut once” proverb in action! |
