At Luthiers Mercantile, we have the largest assortment of binding materials anywhere. When shopping for plastic binding, it’s important to realize that there are a wide variety of lengths. This is true with wood bindings, but there we find that 32 inches long is pretty standard. The plastic bindings come in quite a range. This is because the plastic bindings come from sheets that are used in a variety of industries, not just guitars. One of the advantages of using plastic for bindings is that some of the strips can go all around the circumference of the body eliminating the need to navigate the joining to strips at the butt of the guitar. No seam!

Once you have landed on the plastic binding section of our website, we strongly recommend you use the filters to dial in the color layup (black/white/black for example) and the size requirements you have. Don’t forget that the celluloid bindings appear under a separate sub-menu on our site. These include the ivoroid and tortoise patterned strips that have special shipping restrictions and costs because the Department of Transportation considers them hazardous.  To help make your selection process a little easier we have prepared for you this chart listing the perimeter of the common guitar shapes and sizes. Remember that if you want to bind the fingerboard or other parts, you need to purchase more strips.

Instrument Reference	Plan Reference	Perimeter
Ramirez classical	PL28	57.160
Hauser classical	PL40	56.892
1937 Hauser classical	PL64	57.188
000, Martin-style 14 fret	PL31	59.770
Orchestra Model (OM), Martin-style	PL34	59.572
Dreadnought, Martin-style, acoustic	PL48	60.438
Small concert (parlor), Martin-style	PL29	52.604
1-18, 1918 Martin-style 12 fret	PL45	54.742
J-200 jumbo, Gibson-style	PL55	63.764
Benedetto archtop NON cutaway	PL33	64.442
Benedetto archtop cutaway	PL33	66.276