Binding the Body (Pt. 3)
The last step on the body will be to clean up the bindings, make them flush with the surfaces of the body and remove the excess glue from the top, back and sides. The best way to do all of this is with a scraper blade, which is a flat or slightly curved piece of steel, about 2″X 5″ and the thickness of maybe 4 or 5 razor blades, that is sharpened on its edges. The blade is scraped across the targeted surface (either the binding or the excess glue) and it removes whatever is in its way, just like a plane does. This has to be done very carefully because with a little misplaced pressure, I can scrape away a lot of extra binding material or body wood, and that would be seen in the finished instrument. This is one of those situations where no amount of reading can substitute for years of experience.
Here are several photos of the scraping process, followed by a couple shots of the body after all of the scraping and a bit of light sanding.