Official Luthiers Forum!

Most vintage instruments have much shallower binding depth than what is seen on many instruments today - usually 3/16"/4.8mm or a bit less. Deeper binding helps hide the occasional mistake, but after having the opportunity to compare vintage and vintage-style guitars and more modern treatments, the shallower binding depth adds to the charm of these instruments. With side sets usually around 5"/~125mm in width, these binding strips can be gotten out of your side blanks prior to bending and still have the 4-1/2"/115mm rough width needed.

On tapering the thickness of the top from bridge to rim, you might consider foregoing that in lieu of a uniform thickness of about 0.085"/2.2mm on this first, and focus on getting through the process, versus perfection in either tone or appearance. We taper as an approach to tuning top compliance, usually with the random orbit sander, scraper, and 1/4 sheet sanding block to wrap up and avoid the printing of brace locations. At this point in your progress from new builder to one seasoned by years of panic, disbelief, and disappointment - and successes, of course - getting to the point where you know YOU can finish an instrument is more important that any approach to optimizing tone, etc.

Of all the advice given, Ms. Moriarty's seems most worthy of printing out and pinning to the wall of your building space, followed by a page or two of other sage advice given.