The soundboard is surrounded with purfling and binding.  On higher end bouzoukis, the purfling usually consists of multi-line black and white purfling surrounding abalone strips.  The binding is then installed outside of that.  Unlike guitars, which have the binding installed with the narrow edge up, the bouzouki’s binding is installed with the wide side up.  First, a shallow rabbet is routed into the edge of the soundboard.  A slightly deeper rabbet is then cut into the first to accomodate the thickness of the binding.

The inner most purlfing is then glued to the soundboard using cyanoacrilate glue and held in place with push pins.  Then the abalone and outer purfling is glued in after that.

The binding is then bent and glued onto the edge of the soundboard and held in place with filament tape.  Once the glue dries, the binding is trimmed with a router and a flush cut trimming bit, and sanded level with the top with a random orbit sander.  The top is now complete.

The finished top.