Cut binding strips with an upside down Dremel tool
If you’re bending a bunch of bindings, here’s a way to do the job fast: Instead of heating and bending individual strips of binding, it’s much easier to bend one wide board — then cut that board into thin strips. So far so good, but how are you going to slice up that board? It would be crazy to try cutting a guitar-shaped board into 1/4" strips on a bandsaw! The answer is this trick I cooked up with our Precision Router Base: Mount a Dremel tool in our Precision Router Base, which is screwed to a board, bottom-side-up. This is held firmly in a vise, and two spring clamps hold a simple wooden fence on it. I used a little Dremel rotary saw blade to do the cutting. Dan Erlewine brought me this maple board that he'd bent to match a “Flying-V” guitar shape (that was in a previous Trade Secret). The curved edges of these bent maple pieces are feeding neatly into the saw, producing a perfect cut around all the bends. I easily got 4 pieces from this one board, and they’re all bent to exactly the same curve! If you’ve never used a bending iron, stay tuned! We’ll cover bending in an upcoming issue of Trade Secrets.The easy way to make custom bindings: use a Dremel tool upside down!
Mount our Precision Router Base upside down to make a micro-tablesaw to cut custom bindings
Strip cutter
Uniform strips of binding, all bent to the same shape
