Guys, The banding is really cool to see peel off the blade. A couple of mistakes I made to avoid:

1. I bought a 10" thin kerf blade for $35. Bigger and more expensive is better-WRONG in this case. The 7 1/4" blade for $10 actually has a thinner kerf and did just as well a job for this operation.

2. The white-black-maple(w-b-m) block needs to be 6-8" wide if you are going to use this piece to rip in half, thickness and glue together to make the w-b-m-m-b-w block. I didn't have a 8" piece of curly maple. When I was having fun making miles of w-b-m banding my block was getting narrower and narrower. Now maybe 4" wide. I thickness this down and ripped in half and glued the two halves together careful to reverse the maple grain. Being the cheap, lazy SOB that I am I decided to make banding from this 2" block. My fingers were way too close to the blade (if it doesn't feel right stop-I broke that rule) and the block flexed creating variable thickness banding.
If your initial maple is not 6-8" I suggest just simply making 2 w-b-m blocks and gluing these together. I'm sure most of you would have realized this simple solution but I'm a novice.

Once you see how easy it is to create banding (knowing the right tricks of the trade) your going to go wild thinking of using different woods and designs.

Skinny block? Try this.

banding