Natural Body Binding

by: Roosevelt Walker Jr.

Over the next few steps here I am going to show you how to do a natural body binding on a guitar. Your guitar wood should be something light for the best effect, but of course you could use any wood you want.

The first step is to tape off around where you want the binding to go. I use auto pin-striping tape, this is vinyl gray 1/4” width. The vinyl streches nicely around the corners. Be sure the tape edge is pressed firmly aginst the guitar so the finish will not bleed underneath it.

After the body is taped you want to brush a couple coats of whatever type of clear you are finish coating with onto just the actual binding. This will keep your paint or dye from bleeding under your next taping.

After the two coats are dry remove the tape and what you will have is clear on the binding as in the picture.

Now you carefully tape just the binding on the guitar. It is important to tape on the clear only and not on the wood on the top of the guitar. If you misalign the tape and tape on the wood your color coat will seep under the tape and you will have a ragedy edge at that location. When that is complete you apply your dye or color coat.

I am going to put binding on the covers as you can see.

After you add your color coat to the guitar let it dry and remove the tape from the binding. And there you have natural body binding.