purfling/binding nubie question

Mungo Park

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I have been reading up on this whole thing and Bradford has been a great help bringing me along. Somebody here somewhere posted some videos about hand building and it was making violins. One thing the maker said was the binding/purfeling on a violin stick out and received the banging around. Then he said you see really old violins but not guitars so much because they are broken because they do not have the same edge treatment. If this is true why do makers not build with the same binding if it is so much better. Or maybe this is not totally true.
My thought was as a first time builder this would be easier to make such a binding.
Any thoughts about this would be great, I am a ways away from doing binding. Cheers Ron.
 
I think the video you saw wasn't referring so much to binding, as violin family instruments generally just have purfling. Rather, I think the builder was talking about how the top and back plates of these instruments stuck out past the ribs, so any impacts to the corners are absorbed by that overhang. The purfling serves to keep damage to those areas from spreading inwards and creating structural problems.
 
The main reason violin family instruments live longer is they are made to and are regularly disassembled and rebuilt. I think you would find that a lot of those violins that are a few hundred years old don't have a lot of the original instrument left in them.

Brad
 
Thanks guys for clearing that up for me, as usual a case of nubie over simplification of the issue.
Yes really those really old expensive violins have been rebuilt and re worked to no end with new parts. Cheers Ron.
 
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