Inlace

[leathermarshmallow]

I am a very unaccomplished musician with interest in building my own instrument. I have been working on a IV kit and it is coming along well....except the binding.

I came across a product called INLACE. It is a liquid that can be mixed many different ways to get different effects and colors and then hardens to stone-hard consistency. I have been playing with it with scrap wood. I was thinking it might be a good way to give a decorative "binding" to a mandolin. Also, peg head designs and other inlays might look nice.

Has anyone ever used this stuff?

I just have a very hard time doing the real inlay. It always looks amateur when I am done.

Greg

[Michael Lewis]

You will find that filling a recess for an inlay rather than actually inlaying a cleanly cut piece will get you less than you are wanting. It is much more difficult to cut a clean and nicely shaped recess than it is to cut a piece that should go in it. Try it on some scrap wood to see how it works.

Practice makes perfect, sort of.

[Gail Hester]

Michael, that's exactly what I was thinking. It would be more difficult than cutting pearl without the benefit of being able to fill around it.

Greg, have you thought about using a pre-cut shell inlay or is it carving the recess that's giving you trouble?

[Dave Cohen]

There was a thread on Inlace on the MIMF forum a while back. Someone tried it and was not impressed, to say the least, with the results.

http://www.Cohenmando.com

[markishandsome]

You can melt celluloid binding in acetone and "paint" the binding in. Much like inlay, however, cutting a clean binding channel is much harder than installing the binding. Can you elaborate as to what exactly is giving you grief with your IV kit binding?

[leathermarshmallow]

As far as the cutting the MOP. I have never tried it. I bought a jewel saw and am going to try it, but the thing that I have the biggest problem with is the recess. I always make that "oops" and then have to find a way to fill it without it looking bad. I have had only limited success with that on trial pieces.

with the binding, I just cannot get it to adhere in the corners. I orders some more pieces online and am going to give it another try after I clean out the channel that now has glue in it.

Maybe I just expect too much for my limited ability! http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Greg

[markishandsome]

with the binding, I just cannot get it to adhere in the corners.

Do you mean the corners of the binding channel or the pointy areas of an F5 shape? You can chamfer the inside corner of the binding strips before you install them to make them fit. What kind of glue are you using? How are you holding the binding in the channel while the glue dries (tape, rubber bands,...)? Binding is tricky, don't expect it to go perfectly on your first attempt.

[Steevarino]

I have been using Inlace with mixed results. #It comes with a 2 part epoxy that is not mixed in equal parts, which makes it a challenge for me. #I have taken to using Devcon 5 minute epoxy, or an equivalent epoxy. #Their pigments seem to work equally well with the other epoxies I have tried, and I have much better luck getting it to set-up when I use equal-amount epoxies.

I will attempt to include a picture of the 2nd resophonic guitar I built. #The words "Red Line" are white Inlace. #The other stuff is inlaid celluloid and a pearl dot.

Here goes...

Steve

[Steevarino]

OK, guess I am having a Brain Phart today about posting pictures, but here is another way. #If you REALLY want to see my first attempt at Inlace inlay, you can see the piece I mentioned above on the 3rd and 4th pictures at this link...

http://www.reso-nation.org/viewtopic.php?t=4872&start=30

I will add that the Big Problem for me with this stuff seems to be the bubbles. #As hard as I try, I get some amount of bubbles while mixing the epoxy and pigments. #This means you have to go back and fill the bubbles a time or two, or three.

Also, I did have the advantage of a CNC machine to carve the letters for me. #Come to think of it, inlacing hand cut relief is way beyond anything I would like to try!

Steve

[Bill Snyder]

Steve when I click your link it takes me to a login page and I do not have a username and password.

[mandolinplucker]

Greg, I tried three times on my first kit to get the binding to stick. I was about ready to throw the thing in the woods untill the good folks on this board told me the right stuff to use. Duco cement in the GREEN tube not the blue tube. Ace, Home depot Another thing that I learned the hard way was that when you pull the tape off of the spruce after the binding has cured it can pull some pretty deep splinters out of the top. Some were too deep to sand out without getting it too thin. Now I warm the tape up with a heat gun or blow drier and pull it off at an angle.

[Michael Lewis]

Live and yearn. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[buddyellis]

Ive been having much better luck with mixing a tube of green tube duco into a small bottle of 'binding goo' -- take all your (ivoroid) binding chips/leftovers and toss them into a small pill bottle and mix in acetone till it melts into a thick mayonnaise consistency. Take that, and mix in a bottle of duco cement, and use that for your 'glue'.

The thicker stuff that settles at the bottom will be perfect for buttering your miter joints, and the thinner stuff at the top is spread in the binding channel with another scrap of binding or a small metal flat spatula. Getting the binding the exact hight of the channel helps too, so when you tape up the binding doesn't want to get pulled over at an angle kicking the bottom out. Butter your miters, and rub the ends together, tape up and the joints disappear with a bit of practice. Be careful with too much pressure, though, as the glue is somewhat 'hot' and can deform the binding if you put too much pressure on the tips.

There ain't no shortcut with this stuff, though. Practice is all that makes it better.

[Stephanie Reiser]

Greg, #I tried three times on my first kit to get the binding to stick. I was about ready to throw the thing in the woods untill the good folks on this board told me the right stuff to use. Duco cement in the GREEN tube not the blue tube. Ace, Home depot Another thing that I learned the hard way was that when you pull the tape off of the spruce after the binding has cured it can pull some pretty deep splinters out of the top. Some were too deep to sand out without getting it too thin. Now I warm the tape up with a heat gun or blow drier and pull it off at an angle.
What kind of tape are you using?
I have never had that problem and I used to use regular hardware store masking tape. Now I use "binding" tape, from Stew-Mac, and it is really worth the money.
Here is a pic of what the tape looks like, but I'm sorry that I don't have a shot of it "in action".
Good luck!

[buddyellis]

Amanda,

Is the 'binding' tape thicker than normal masking tape? That's my only gripe about the regular masking tape is that sometimes it wants to tear (around the points, in the waists, etc). I've just started pre-making up strips of triple thickness in those places where you need a bit extra pressure.

In re: tape tearout. This seems to be a problem with the IV wood, in general. It's a bit soft. The various 'painters tape' types help, but not 100%. The trick is to get that tape off as quickly as you can. Get the mando out in the sun or some other source of mild heat so you can gas out the glue quickly. Mild heat also softens the tape glue a bit making it easier to pull off if you find you're having tearout issues.

[Steevarino]

Sorry about the Reso-Ntion link. I wasn't aware you had to sign up just to look around.

I reduced the size of the photo (of my inlace inlay) and will try to show it here.

About Duco, I didn't know it came in anything but a green tube! I use it sometimes, but I have found you have to be careful when gluing celluloid. I bound a guitar body with tortoise colored celluloid, glued it with Duco, untaped, leveled, and sanded it the next day, finish sanded the instrument, making it finish-room-ready, only to find that the Duco reacted with the celluloid, and cratered the center of it all along the length of the binding. Sort of a drag, as I had to super-carefully rescrape the entire instrument to level all of the newfound shrunken-ness.

I switched to superglue after that, no more problems, and it dries a lot faster.

About the tape, I go through quite a bit of the brown tape mentioned earlier, but I don't use it much for binding a wooden instrument. I have found that it has too much tack to it, and it will take away some of the wood (especially top wood) when you remove it, unless you use a heat gun. A better tape for me is, what I guess is called filament tape. It is the stuff sometimes used on shipping packages. It has very strong filaments that run along the length of the tape. It is extremely strong, and you can really pull it hard when gluing down the binding, and it won't tear along the edge of the instrument, like most paper tapes are prone to do. The real great feature is that the amount of stick it has to it is just about perfect. Strong enough to hold, easy to remove, no need for the heat gun, and no grain pulling.

Steve

www.CumberlandAcoustic.com
www.RedLineResophonics.com

[Stephanie Reiser]

Amanda,

Is the 'binding' tape thicker than normal masking tape?
Buddyellis, yes, the so-called binding tape is thicker. It also seems to have just the right amount of hold-vs.-give ratio, if that makes sense.
I have never had it tear on the corner of the body like masking tape does.

[markishandsome]

I've found that even amongst different brands of the blue painters tape there is significant variation in the tackiness and "teariness". I used the filament tape once and didn't think it was sticky enough. I guess to each their own!