Advice on binding?

Ok...so I have refinished quite a few guitars, and built 2 from scratch.

My next project however, is the first guitar I have ever done that has an actual bunding around the body.

I'm going with paint, rather than stain on this one, and I'd like advice from some of you guys on how to handle the binding when painting the guitar.

In my research, I have found many suggestions. Some folks say to carefully mask the binding...which I'm sure would be the most effective, but would be time consuming. Others say to paint over the binding, then clean the paint off of it with lighter fluid, or something similar...or to take it off with steel wool. This seems like there is huge potential for error. Another suggestion I read, was to carefully take a cotton swab, and coat the binding with Vaseline before painting, then just wipe if off before applying the clear coat.

OK...those are suggestions I have gotten, and they're probably all foolish.

So tell me, fellow builders. How do you prepare your binding when painting a guitar? What works best for YOU?

Vaseline is a new one. I haven't heard of that one before!
I just taped up all the binding. It's not that time consuming. Just be patient with it.

Hi Crash, I'm with Zandy never heard of vasoline but it may work well. Only problem if you rub any vasoline over the timber to be painted it won't take so that is a risk.
I think the safest method is to mask the binding, as Zandy says, take your time. Clean any oil on the binding from your hands before you mask. Get some good quality masking tape about 5 or 6mm wide should cover the binding nicely.

If any paint bleeds under the tape you can scrape that off once the painting has been done

what shape scratch are you planning ?

Yep, tape and scrape.

Yep, the 6mm vinyl tape from 3M is perfect. I always mask.

cheers,
Gav.

I've always scraped the paint off (not that one and a half guitars so far counts as much experience). But it really needs to be done before the paint sets too hard. I've always left it far too long in the past and it's a real PITA to do then. If you see videos of Gibson or StewMac binding scraping, you'd think its the easiest thing in the world to do. But because I've had too paint top, bottom and sides separately, not having somewhere big enough to do them all together, and with the weather getting in the way of spraying, too much time passed before I started the scraping.

Scraping is also harder if you're using a dark colour by the bindings and (like on the ES-3) the binding is striped with a dark inner stripe. This makes it almost impossible to see under the lacquer, so your hoping that you're holding the blade the right distance from the edge when you're scraping away. I've got to touch-up the lacquer near the edge in a couple of places as I first thought the inner binding was white- and kept scraping away exposing the bare wood until I realised my error!

So whilst scraping supposedly gives you the cleanest lines (as the scraping videos say), I'd go with masking in the future.

Not sure if this is the right forum/thread, but has anyone added their own binding to a standard TL-1 kit?
I didnt want to wait for a custom kit and just assumed i could add my own binding, but i didnt realise the body edges were pre-chamfered (which of course makes total sense that it would be).
So, I'm trying to work out whether to risk routing the edge to add side binding to the body. Looking at the chamfer, it looks like i might have to commit to a side binding plus top purfling if i go ahead.
Anyone done this before? Does it work ok? Any hints to help make sure i get it right? - thanks

For anyone who reads this, I did in fact as my own binding. I had to route out about 3mm and install 2 layers of binding to make sure I got rid of the chamfer, but it came out good in the end

got some pics? Always interested to see