Slothead headstock binding with purfling

[Dave White]

I love the free sharing attitude of the guitar building world and am like a magpie, picking up useful techniques and ideas wherever I can and adapting and using them in my making. This one I learned from Anthony Zlahtic at the OLF. I use side purflings on my bound fingerboards and wanted to carry this into the headstock binding. The technique is fiddly but pretty straightforward and as I'm doing this at the moment I thought I'd photo it and pass it on:

The first step is to mark the front edge (i.e. that butts onto the fretboard edge) of the nut on the top of the main neck with the back edge being the start of the downward sloping headstock. Then a scrap piece of wood the width of the nut is glued on where the nut will be. I didn't take a photo this time but here's one from an earlier build:



Back to this build. When the glue is dry, this scrap piece is sanded in line with the headstock face angle - in effect the headstock is brought forward to the nut edge and is stepped up from the man neck face. The top and back headstock veneers are then glued on and the headstock shaped:



Then the channels for the headstock bindings are routed. The bottom of the routed channel should be in line with the top of the necks fingerboard plane where it meets. This means that the purfling lines will meet and it also means that you can safely rout past the end of the headstock and the bit will not touch the fingerboard plane of the neck :



The bindings are mitred, cut to length and glued in:



The bindings are scraped flush with the headstock. Then the nut slot is cut. A block is made with the bottom sloping at the same angle as the headstock. This is attached to the headstock with double-stick tape at the line of the back edge of the nut. The face is perpendicular to the fretboard face. Using the block as a guide a fret saw is used to make a cut in the ebony veneer that stops just short of the bwb purfling:



Next using the laminate trimmer and a straight-edge fence the rest of the nut slot is cut in the plane of the headstock. This is done carefully with a number of passes until the depth is down to the start of the bwb purfling. This is definitely not a time to sneeze :



Here's the result:



Here's the fingerboard butted against the headstock showing the continuation of the bwb purfling:



Eventually it should end up looking like this - except it will be ebony and not cocobolo:

[Hesh1956]

Dave this is an excellent tutorial - Thank You!!!

The continuing bwb purf really give it a pro look.

Nicely done my friend.

[Craig]

Thanks a heap for that Dave. Very clear and easy to understand . Beautiful looking Headstock mate



Cheers Craig

[BillyT]

I love these tut's! They make it look so easy!
Thanks Dave!

Billy Dean

[BillyT]

This is definitely not a time to sneeze :

except it will be ebony and not cocobolo:

Oh! A wise guy, Huhn!

[Serge]

Thanks Dave, great tutorial indeed, i love that purfling line under the fretboard too, i will have to try that out!

[Allen]

How do you do your fret board purflings Dave? I've managed to put them next to the fret slots, but haven't come up with a good way to have them on the bottom like you have. Would love to find a method that will work for me.

And I really like the finished look of this. Thanks for the tutorial.

[Dave White]

Allen,

It's not that complicated really, pretty much like making the body bindings with side-purflings. I bind my fingerboards by making them wider than the finished dimensions by two widths of my bandsaw blade kerf. I then cut the fingerboard binding strips from each edge of the fingerboard with the bandsaw - the width of these strips being the same as the bwb purfling I use. I then glue the bwb purfling to the bottom of these edge strips. The centre portion of the fretboard is then slotted and the edge pieces (with bwb purfling) glued back on to the edges with the bottom of the purfling matching the bottom of the fretboard. When the glue is dry the edge pieces are sanded flush with the centre part of the fretboard.

Hope this makes sense.