Hello everyone!
First of all I just want to thank everyone on this forum! I’ve been reading it for years while dreaming of building a mandolin someday and now the time is finally here. The wealth of information and the generosity and kindness of everyone to share ideas and experiences here has been awesome to watch and now to be a part of! Hope I’m worthy to join the family.
I’m a first time builder trying to make an F5 mandolin from the Roger Siminoff book. I’ve been trying to build it while I’m at home for The Corona Quarantine and have been pretty lucky so far with plenty of mistakes, re-dos and learning curves to make it fun. I’d love to post more on the process and build but for now the binding has me at a stand still. At the beginning I thought the dovetail neck joint would be the crux (and indeed it scared me the most and it didn't end up perfect, but I strung it up last week to test it and it didnt pop off so im happy with it!) but this binding is kicking my ass! And yea, Ive read a lot about how nothing on an F5 (or any instrument) is easy, but that's why Im doing it! haha
As for my question. I’m using the cream and black ABS plastic binding from Stew MAC. I laminated a .02 cream/.02 black/ .06 cream together with acetone and let them sit for two days. I made a block with a cut down the top to use as a laminating jig to pull it through like the stew max binding jig thing. I used the same process for laminating .02C/.02B/.02C for the fretboard binding and had no problem at all. Little learning curve to bend it around the bottom of the "toe scallop" but otherwise I'm very happy with how it came out.
Now that I'm trying to bend the body binding around the scroll areas, I'm not having any luck at all. I've tried using a hair dryer and boiling water to no result. With the hair dryer, if its not hot enough it cant bend tight enough without cracking white at the pressure line. If it's hot enough, the inside .02 cream piece and sometimes the .02 black as well kinks and buckles when bent tight enough. When I use the boiling water i get the same exact problems respectfully but then also if too hot the middle laminate starts to boil and bubble causing these ugly spots in the binding. I think this may have happened a little with the hair dryer too when it got too hot once.
Now I just tried to use the hair dryer very slowly heating 4-6 inches first and then slowly bending over a socket back an forth like bending the maple rims slowly and surely but the laminate just de laminated on me as it got tighter. Then I tried to use acetone to pull them apart and try laminating them one by one on the binding edge but they just broke off.
Ive tried everything but the sand/glass beads in the hot plate which I don't think will actually be different in regards to the laminate binding and kinking at the tight bends. I've taken 3 days slowly trying one method, then another, heating slowly and easily, still no luck.
Is celluloid binding REALLY that much different in its handing characteristics? Obviously Ive tried to read everything I can find here about it and there's clearly a "majority opinion" that celluloid/ivoroid binding is "better"/more often used while ABS "is wonderful sewage pipe", and I see more builders that actively post using celluloid, but then in Tomy Hovington's video on binding a triple laminate f style mandola he's using the ABS plastic binding, puts in the the boiling water and just twists it up with some pliers??? Only thing I can think of is maybe he's using thinner laminates? This part is at 4:40 in the video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwEMcsqiTOM
Any help would be greatly appreciated and thanks for you time!. For now I'm tacking and shifting sails towards inlaying the peghead. If I need to I'll order some new binding from stew mac.
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