Telecaster build - binding 2

Putting the binding on the back of the guitar is trickier than the front - the binding material has to go all the way round the heel, which means two 90 degree bends. In addition, the material forms a complete loop around the guitar body, which means it has to be joined at some point. You want this join to be seamless and invisible if at all possible.

I made a couple of jigs to allow the bending in the heel area to be done off the guitar body, where the recurves get in the way: 




I only had enough binding material in the right colour for one go, so I did a practice... 



Applying heat from the heat gun, the first corner went on pretty well...

...The second corner, less so.  



However, a couple of tries through both jigs later, and the shape was made:



So, time to do it for real. I wanted to measure where on the length of binding to make the heel curves. In effect, you're choosing where to put the binding joint. It's easier to join it on a flat part of the guitar (like the back). In addition, I wanted to put the joint slightly off centre on the back as it will be slightly less noticable - people's eyes get drawn to the centre of the guitar so putting it somewhere else can be beneficial. My old luthiery tutor told me that - sounds plausible! 

The length of the binding material from the tentative (slightly off centre) binding join to the heel is measured using string: 



And the binding is bent for real:



One down:



Two down: 



And it fits well around the heel (weird angle photo...):



The binding is glued on again, at speed. No photos as I was working quickly:



But once it's on, you can start to pick up how it's going to look:



Annoyingly, I got my string measurement wrong, and measured from the wrong end of the binding :) This put the binding joint in both a slightly trickier area on the top of the guitar. It's also in a much more visible place, right on the top where the forearm contour would be on something like a strat. 
It shouldn't be a problem - the joint is good, and it should be possible to make it invisible by brushing it with acetone to slightly melt the binding material.  

After a few hours, the tape is removed



There's one small, and fairly manageable gap near the heel:



But overall, given this was my first time using plastic binding, I'm pretty happy with how it looks: 






I'll do some scraping / planing / low grit sanding to level the binding off and remove the glue squeeze out, but after that I'm going to call it a day on this body. 

Next up is Tele 2. I want to get them both in the same state before starting on their necks.