French Bass full restoration

[Matthew Tucker]

While this was going on I started on making some purfling for the corner repairs.



I discovered that the original purfling is made of a pinkish wood, not white. I'm guessing this is some kind of fruit wood like pear or cherry, but not sure what. It's quite hard. I wonder if ID-ing this might help narrow down the bass's origin?

I had to hunt through my pile to find something that might match.



The strips are planed down with my large smoother



then taken down to the final thickness with my new HNT Gordon smoother with the blade setup as a scraper.





I have made a special jig for bending the purfling to roughly the right shape. sort of a mini fox-bender. I use a heat-gun for heat.



I've tried both PVA and hide glue; in the end, for this pre-bent stuff, the hide glue worked better.





After the glue is dry I cut the bent laminate into strips



neat, huh?