Wood Binding--Preventing the Stain From Bleeding onto Bindings

[Andy Morton]

Hi Cafe Members--Thoughts on using shellac to prevent stain from the body bleeding onto or into the bindings.

I was thinking that I would brush shellac on the binding rabbet and on the binding strips and then using hot hide glue for gluing the binding to the body. My initial tests with gluing shellacked binding strips to another shellacked wood surface seemed to work--good adhesion.

What do you think?

Andy

[Marty Jacobson]

Should be fine. I'm assuming you're using dewaxed shellac and that the shellac is just a light seal coat without forming a film over the surface of the mating surfaces, which would probably still work but is potentially trouble since you're relying on the integrity of that film.
Do a test with dye and a recurve as well. If the shellac has wicked through to the recurve you might have uneven dye wetting in that area, especially in the 10, 2, 4, and 8 o'clock positions. But if you used the shellac sparingly that's unlikely.

[Andy Morton]

Hey Thanks Marty---Yes, I was planning to test all of this on scrap as you suggest.

Appreciate it.

Andy

[HoGo]

Shellac will cause weaker bond. many violinmakers use shellac on rim and top surfaces to make top removal easier.
Preventing staining wood bindings is hard thing to do even for long time pros and reparing oopses in this area is even harder... been there...
best bet would be seal whole instrument and use sprayed on color coat first that worked for me.

[j. condino]

No need to seal the binding channel when it is the actual wood binding you are interested in protecting. Sealing the binding channel will help with issues like the other current thread showing CA glue bleeding into the wood capillaries.

I use a small detail brush and a magnifying glass to "paint" shellac over curly maple binding; usually a couple of times. Then I can handrub my normal finish colors. If there is a small binding area that gets a bit of color on it, a solution of dilute bleach will wash it out. Also- a huge help in dealing with curly maple binding is to leave it oversized and raw during the initial finishing stages and when applying color. After the color looks great and the instrument gets all scraped, save the final smoothing and roundover of the binding edges for last; it will sand out any excess color.

Like everything, practice, practice.....

[axmaker]

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