Repairing shrinking waist binding on acoustic guitar

Binding shrinkage is one of those repairs that looks simple until you're in the middle of it. Here I'll cover what actually works when guitar binding pulls away at the waist — why the heat-and-stretch approach might be a short-term fix, and why the more reliable method means releasing the binding all the way back to the nearest seam. It's more work, but it's the right kind of more work. Binding can shrink. Plastic and especially celluloid can actually get smaller as it ages. Sometimes this is a slow process but, now and then, it happens more quickly than you’d like. Well, not that you’d ever like this but you know what I mean.The shrinkage is usually more evident along the length of the binding. In long straight binding runs—like along the side of a neck—the binding shortens and you’ll sometimes see gaps at the nut or end of the fingerboard. It’s often possible to get away with grafting a little extra piece of binding in to repair this.Binding around a guitar body, though, is an even…