Cheers Hewsey,

Don't worry about the Dremel catalogue, most of it is grinding and sanding stuff. What you really need are the custom accessories you get from StewMac and LMI

And you have to love the flex shaft... I have 2 standard Dremels, a cordless one, and 2 flexshafts now

Mike,

you are right. The more you do, the more damage you risk doing if you make a mistake. So yes, you do get nervous. But you have to remind yourself to trust your tools, your skills, your knowledge, and your experience. Use scrap to make practice cuts to get used to a new tool. And remember that the worst case scenario is that you have to buy more wood and start again, but with the benefit of more experience

the aluminium lump screwed onto the end of the Dremel is a guide. Part of an old set from StewMac. If you look closer at the pic you can see that the the 115 router bit sits inside an offset fence. One side of the fence cuts a wider channel than the other, and as there are two tools in the kit, each with different offsets, you get 4 different width cuts. The depth of the cut is set by how you mount the cutter in the Dremel.

It's a simple tool and very accurate, you just make a series of passes against the body and let the tool guide the cutter. The screw on collar does the work for you, and in principle it's just the same as the fancy binding tools that LMI and StewMac sell. Rather than pressing the body against a jig holding a laminate cutter, you press the jig to the body.

Regretably, StewMac have discontinued the set I own and replaced it with a single, adjustable, version. The new tool give you adjustable width channels instead of a choice of four widths, but it's more complex. And creative use of masking tape can let you get more than four different width cuts from the old tool.

Anyway, this afternoon I removed the 2nd body from the go bar deck and the front glued nicely. But there was a small section that hadn't glued, so I filled the gap with glue and left it clamped overnight.

Then it was back to the 1st body and the bindings.

I decided to run over the sides with some sandpaper and a sanding block. There were a few places where the sides had curved leaving the sides with some dips and crowns. And while I could have waited until final finishing, it was better to true them now, and then run the Dremel on another pass rather than risk the bindings varying in thickness.

Then I cut a channel on both sides of the square edge of the cutaway ready for maple trimming once the binding is finished.

And finally, I got out the bending iron to pre-curve the binding strips and purflings ready for glueing... Which reminds me, I need to take along my Sellotape tomorrow, it's ideal for taping the glued bindings in place...

So, now I've put the Sellotape next to the paracetamol ready to put into my bag in the morning, here's what they look like.


[image][/image]

The main thing was to pre-bend for the tight curves, not to make them an exact match. The maple on the treble side actually split, but nothing to worry about. Flame maple is always difficult to bend because the flame is actually where the grain breaks through to the edge. A little care and a piece of flat steel (a 6" ruler actually) held against the back of the split let me finish the bend. That's the hidden advantage of side bending machines... as well as giving very accurate and repeatable bends, a side bending machine holds the wood between two steel plates and really does reduce the risk of splits and cracks by combining tension and compression bending.

Andy

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When the going gets weird, the Weird turn Pro.

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