Binding a tele?

[twangcaster1]

I've bound several Les Pauls, hundreds of them. When I worked for gibsons I bound bodies and carved the arched les paul tops with a belt sander. But I never learned how to remove paint from the binding after the guitar is painted and finished. How do you scrape it off and make it look neat? I'd like to build a double bound blue sparkle telecaster, but I'm worried about finishing a bound guitar and ruining it trying to scrape the paint off the binding. How do you do it?

[KokoTele]

I did it by masking the binding with 3M's fine-line vinyl masking tape. It's basically narrow blue electrical tape that works very well for masking compound curves. It happened to be the right width to mask the side of the binding with just enough left to fold over and mask the top.

You have to unmask basically as soon as the paint has set, but not dried completely.

You may find that the line is not completely clean and sharp in a couple of spots, but it's easily cleaned with some light scraping with a razor blade.

I tried doing it once just by scraping, but found that it requires far more skill than I have. I've seen videos of factory workers scraping Les Pauls, and they use a special kind of knife and long-smooth (and fast!) strokes.

Gibson Montana scrapes the binding on the acoustic with glass slides (the ones for a microscope).

[twangcaster1]

When I worked at Gibson, they used flat, thin, bendible, rectangular steel knives and scraped away at the binding in long, fast strokes like you said. But I never tried it. It looks like something you'd have to do often to get good at.

[KokoTele]

Every time I've seen photos of people scraping binding at the Gibson factory, they were always accompanied by a comment that they were highly skilled and practiced artisans.

Like I said, I tried it once and found it was hard to do a good job scraping.

[scubadoo]

I've done two bound tele's now, the second one i did with a homemade scraper that i copied from one in a build by Ron Kirn.



You set the depth of the blade and just scrape away in long strokes. I'm not sure how you would do it on a carved top guitar though like a Les Paul. Any thoughts?

Here's the double-bound tele that i did:

[Buckocaster51]

Originally Posted by scubadoo

I've done two bound tele's now, the second one i did with a homemade scraper that i copied from one in a build by Ron Kirn.

that's what I have started to use

It is the bee's knees!

[Rhomco Guitars]

Posted this before but every day is a different audience. I use microscope slides. The sharp glass edge is a dream of a scraper. I only use maple for the holder because it has superior tone :)
Rob