Rope!

With the archtop’s body together, the next stage is to work on the bindings and purflings. Like most luthier’s, I cut the rebate channels for the bindings and purflings with a router. I don’t know if I’m getting fussier in my old age, but these days I seem to spend more and more time fettling the rebate in search of the prefect fit!

 I’ve always liked “rope” purfling and have successfully used it on a number of guitars, but never on a mandolin.  I like to have the purflings and rosette matching and the curves on my mandolin rosettes are far too tight to bend the rope purfling around. Anyway, I had a lightbulb moment, “the archtop doesn’t have a rosette!” So, I thought that I’d use rope on this one.

Here you can see the purfling being held (whilst the glue dries) in place by some StewMac Orange Multi-Purpose Tape. It’s the first time that I’ve used this tape and I’ve been happy with its performance so far. It might not sound like a big deal, but getting just the right tape is important- tough enough, right amount of tack etc….

 

And with the purflings in place, I go through my usual mummification process to get the maple bindings glued on.