Official Luthiers Forum!

I am well equipt to make my own radius dishes, but I thought all the fuss of making a routing jig and all that horrible MDF dust for just one radius dish is not worth it, so I bought one from LMI. I shall be using 15 foot radius for the back and 30 foot radius for the soundboard.



I did say one because I will be building my steel string guitar using the Frank Finnochio method, as I purchased his five DVD set from StewMac. Although he builds a radius into his soundboard,( 28 foot radius ) he sands the linings and sides flat. He then uses an 1/8" shim at the tail block to sand an angle up to the transverse brace. This effectively creates the neck angle and there is no need to sand the domed part of the soundboard to accept the fingerboard extension because it`s already flat. I rather like his construction methods and I only need one radius dish.

Chris,
Everyone's suggestions are very good. I also suggest you go ahead and make your first and see how they turn out. I'm sure you will be fine. Another tool that may be very helpful is one of our Contour radius gauges. This jig is $18 and will help with many phases of guitar building, including making dishes. The rails that the router will ride on need to have a good radius, and you can use this radius gauge to draw your radius'. I addition to that, they are very helpful for drawing your radius on the bottom of your braces. Even for making a small dome dish for the bottom of your bridge. One side of the gauge is concave and one is convex. Hope that will help you out. By the way, our dishes are cut on a CNC machine, so they are perfect. Best of luck!
Tracy

_________________
Tracy
http://www.luthiersuppliers.com

Thanks Tracy! Yes, I've gotten some mixed opinions here... some hold that building the jigs and dishes are part of the experience and some just see it as something to get around if possible. Unfortunately I don't know where I'm at yet :)

Like I said, I'm going to try and do at least these first. But I am quite positive that I will end up purchasing... if not sooner then later for future use. Oh and I like those guages -
Can you make the bank statement or reciept say "Groceries" or "Fuel"? I could probably sneak a few things by my wife if that were the case.

_________________
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils - Louis Hector Berlioz

Chansen / C hansen / C. Hansen / Christian Hansen - not a handle.

Christian