Binding seems to occupy a lot of space on the Les Paul guitar and luthier forums.  What width?  What thickness?  Whose color is correct?  I have to admit, I got caught up in it.  One dealer has a cream that some folks say is too pink for a vintage-style Les Paul.  Another’s is the right color, but too expensive (something about shipping plastic material that might catch fire!).  Others say just to use white binding and to spray it with amber tinted lacquer when finishing the guitar.  This also plays into what color pickup rings, knobs, pickguards, etc. to get.  And they were all decisions that I went back and forth on for weeks.

For many the goal is to duplicate a vintage 1957-60 series Les Paul.  Any old guitar has taken on the character of the years.  Headstocks are chipped. Backs are scratched.  And the original white binding that Gibson put on in the factory has now faded to a creamy buff color.  Some builders go so far as to distress and age their shiny new guitar by adding chips, nicks, and scratches; freezing and thawing the guitar repeatedly to get the ‘new’ lacquer to crack. And, yes, finding the perfect color of plastic binding that looks like a 60-year-old guitar.

I ordered some cream binding from Pilgrim’s Pride on a recommendation.  I can’t speak to the quality of the binding at this time as I have not received delivery and they are pretty unresponsive to inquiries.  This actually gave me time to reconsider my whole color scheme.  I ended up switching away from the standard cream color for binding, pickup rings, switch ring, and plug cover, with gold knobs, in favor of a black and white schema.  So I ended up buying the standard white binding from StewMac.  It arrived promptly along with a bunch of other goodies, so I am somewhat committed.

Gluing on the binding is pretty straight-forward.  Trimming it down to the edge of the fretboard and over the ends of the frets is another matter altogether.   There is a great article on StewMac that runs through this process in good detail. As recommended in the article, I used WeldOn-16 to glue the binding.  It actually flashes off quicker than I was  expecting when I spread it on the wood.  Next time I’ll just spread a good bead on the binding only for the next round on the body binding. I also created a quick clamping jig by nailing two rail strips on either side of the tapered fretboard.  I just needed to slide the fretboard and binding in between and give it a small tap to put even clamping pressure across the entire edge of the fretboard.

Gluing the binding was the quick part.  Trimming it down was another matter.  I took the bulk of the extra binding off with a small hand plane.  Next I worked down along the edge of each fret with a razor blade, before taking off the remaining binding between the frets with a razor blade and file.  Final cleanup was done with a razor blade scraper and my fret file.  A slick trick is to turn your razor blade into a mini-scraper by running the edge of the blade across a rounded metal surface such as a screwdriver.  This creates a small hook (just like in a card scraper) that really helps the razor blade scrape effectively.  I’ve been using razor blades  for years as scrapers without knowing about this trick.  It improves the razor as a scraper by leaps and bounds.  Scraping down the binding is slow work, but you don’t want to rush it.  Messing up means starting over with the binding.

At this point I’ve cleaned up most of the binding and sanded the binding thickness down a little bit to get the fretboard down to the final dimensions.  I’ll bevel off the top edge to create the transition to the frets once I get working on the neck.  Not bad for a first shot.  I’ll continue to do a little clean up here and there, but I could easily put this on the neck and be perfectly happy with it.  Next up, the body.