Official Luthiers Forum!

Two separate questions:

1.) I'm trying to radius a fretboard by hand, either with a plane or sandpaper. I'm in a small one-car garage and am trying to radius a preslotted B-graded ebony fretboard from LMI so that I can practice fretting and inlay work on a similar radius as I'll be doing with a kit very soon. I don't have much experience with woodworking, so I'm not sure about the quickest and most economical way to radius a board this way.

2.) I've officially got the bug. I know myself well enough to know that it's all over but the shoutin'. In anticipation of wanting to buy woods, bend them myself, etc., I'm starting to wonder what the best way for thicknessing soundboards, backs and sides, will be. I know that using a Wagner safety planer can work with straight grained woods, but how would you recommend thicknessing a curly or flamed wood? (again, in a small shop). Can I thickness sand using a handheld belt sander, or would this be sacreligious?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Darren

Darren,

For the fingerboard radius, you can't go wrong with a radius sanding block. You can find them at Stew-Mac or LMI.

I made a sled for my router that I use for thicknessing sides, backs and soundboards. I got the idea from a post Colin made about 6 months ago. It works pretty well. Craig Holden has a jig that does the same thing with the added feature of holding the wood down with a vacuum.

I use this thing to get within about 0.01" of my target thickness then finish up with a RO sander.

_________________
53% of all statistics are made up on the spot
http://driftwoodguitars.blogspot.com/

Darren,

I'd recommend buying the sanding blocks either from LMI or Stewmac to radius your fingerboard. They're relatively inexpensive and come in a variety of radii. Most steel strings are radiused to 16" and I think a radiused block can be had for about $15.00. Just be sure when you're using the block to keep it parallel to the center line of the fingerboard at all times. You can make a simple jig to acomplish this.

As for thicknessing wood, you've got several alternatives. I'd stay away from the belt sander. You can ruin a piece of wood very quickly if you're not careful. I have no personal experience with the safety planer, though I've heard that many people get excellent results with them. My recommendation for those starting out is to use a hand plane. A properly set up plane will do an excellent job on all types of wood. Take the time to learn all you can about sharpening and set up.There are several very good books on the subject available at places like Woodcraft. Many fine instruments have been and are being made today with hand tools. Once you have a few guitars under your belt and have a little more shop space, then you might want to consider buying more power tools, but they are not necessary to build a good guitar.

_________________
Jimmy Caldwell
http://www.caldwellguitars.com

Hi Darren,

I concur with Wayne and Jimmy's advice regarding a radiusing block. I build classicals, which generally don't need a radius, but I have built one steel string acoustic. I decided that I was gonna radius it by hand, using a plane and sanding blocks. The result was disappointing. After I'd completed the guitar and played it for a while, I bought a StewMac 16" radius block, took the guitar back out to the shop, pulled out the frets, and radiused it with the block, the way I should have in the first place. It made a huge difference in comfort and playability.

Regarding the Wagner Safe-T-Planer, there are a number of luthiers out there who use it for thicknessing stock. I've used one, too. But be aware that the stock tends to chatter unless you fabricate some sort of jig that holds it down to your drill press table while running it through. I consider this addition to be a requirement if you'll be using a Safe-T-Planer on (expensive) tonewoods.

Jimmy is right. If you haven't done so already, invest in a good block plane, learn how to put a good edge on it, and you can use it for most woods. The trick I learned from Brian Burns with the harder woods is to increase the bevel angle on the plane iron. I have two irons for my block plane -- one set to 25 deg. and one set to 55 deg. The latter will get me through most dense woods, but for the highly figured stuff, I still have trouble with tearout. Maybe a low-angle block plane will work better for that? I dunno, I don't own one. I wuss out and run the figured stuff through my drum sander :)

Best,

Michael

_________________
Live to Play, Play to Live

Don Williams suggested I find a local cabinet maker and ask to "rent" time on their commercial thickness sander vs. spending the tool up money on something I won't use very much. As usual, he was right: turned out there's one about 3 miles from my house in the shop of a high-end furniture builder.

Haven't used it yet, but me and the guy have come to terms with the price, and he's even agreed to order a finer sanding belt if I need it. Nice guy, who was rather interested in hearing about guitarmaking. No more guitars than I'll ever build, renting a few minutes every now and then on this killer machine will be well worth it.

Give it some thought.

_________________
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

[QUOTE=WayneC] Darren,

For the fingerboard radius, you can't go wrong with a radius sanding block. You can find them at Stew-Mac or LMI.

I made a sled for my router that I use for thicknessing sides, backs and soundboards. I got the idea from a post Colin made about 6 months ago. It works pretty well. Craig Holden has a jig that does the same thing with the added feature of holding the wood down with a vacuum.

I use this thing to get within about 0.01" of my target thickness then finish up with a RO sander.

[/QUOTE]

Wayne,

Can you give a description of how you built this router sled, the parts used, and sources? Looks pretty slick.

CrowDuck

_________________
Chris Nielsen
Soquel, CA.

I use a basic, fugly router jig to rough-radius my fingerboards. Actually built it around/on top of my radius dish radiussing setup. Just remove the guide rails, add parallel bars, and a simple base for the router. It's not pretty, leaves a slightly rough surface, but takes the pain out of sanding a radius entirely by sanding block:



Finished, post-routing:



Cleanup with a radiussed sanding block is very quick and accurate; heck, bringing a 15" radius (what the guide is for) down to 12" (what I used on those necks) was quick enough not to bother making an additional router base. Maybe 5 minutes on rosewood, probably 10 on Ebony...

For thicknessing, so far, I've used handplanes for tops (not that hard), and had suppliers thickness stuff for me otherwise. I do have all the parts for a thickness sander, though, so I'll be building one, but in the interim I've got an address (thanks Russ!) where I can get stuff thickness sanded for me. If/when I start resawing things, that could get annoying.

For the fingerboard a radius block from SM/LMI as everyone has suggested, build a box for the fingerboard to sit in with side rails to guide the block, that way you can run the block up and down the board consistently.

For thicknessing, I use either a plane or the Wagner, both do a great job but I finish off with a sanding disc in the drill press, like this one:



This is the hold down and fence set up with the Wagner in place:



I find that if properly sharpened the Wagner can handle any wood you throw at it. And the sanding disc produces a superb and accurate finish. But, you can always finish off with a random orbital sander.

ColinColin S38841.2617361111

_________________
I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

For thicknessing, i use my home made drum sander, i looked around from google searches and it brought me many places where i picked up ideas to come up with my design, not so hard to make.





Serge

If you have furniture guy with a thickness sander go for that in the meantime - any of the above suggestions will suffice if you plan on setting up something in your shop.
Cheers
Charliewood

[QUOTE=crowduck]
Wayne,

Can you give a description of how you built this router sled, the parts used, and sources? Looks pretty slick.

CrowDuck [/QUOTE]

Chris,

The sled is pretty simple. The base is a piece of 1/2" MDF about 20X30" (big enough to place a joined back or top on it)and a couple of 3/4" plywood scraps. The rails are two 1" aluminum angles from Home Despot.

For the sled part, I got a piece of acrylic from the local Woodcraft store to mount the router on. They sell them as router baseplates. I cut a couple of 6" pieces of the aluminum angle and bolted that onto opposite edges of the acrylic piece. The rollers are bolted to the angle pieces and ride on the rails. I found the rollers in the screen door / sliding door repair aisle at Lowes. Home Depot had some plastic ones, but Lowes had metal-with-bearings and I thought those would be smoother rolling.

My router came with a detachable base which I bolted to the sled. Total cost of materials for the whole thing was less than $30. I will probably add some hold-downs in the future to help hold the wood flat to the base.

There are two downsides I experience when using this thing. The first is that I don't have dust collection on it, so I have to use it outside. The second is that when using a straight router bit, the bit leaves tool marks on the wood. I'm going to try a 1/2" downcut bit to see if I get a cleaner cut. As it is, I use this thing to get to within ~0.01" of my final thickness then switch to my RO sander and scraper to remove the last bit of wood along with the tool marks.

_________________
53% of all statistics are made up on the spot
http://driftwoodguitars.blogspot.com/

Wow, you guys! Thanks for all the great suggestions. It's nice to know that you don't need to have a huge garage or dedicated warehouse to build guitars from scratch.

Wayne, thanks for the idea on the use of a router with a sled. It's requirement to be used outside would actually be beneficial to me since my garage space is so limited...since it appears fairly easy to store "flat" with the use of a folding workbench. In the meantime, I ordered a Wagner planer last night and will give that a shot sometime soon. But I'm sure I'll eventually try to skin that cat in more than one way.

I built the sanding trough for the radius block last night and will work some more on the fingerboard tonight. Mattia, I think I'll steal that rough radiusing jig idea from you, which means...(drum roll)

...it's router-buying time. I've been putting off the purchase of a router until I decide which method I'll be using to execute the binding cuts, since I've gotten the feeling there's a consensus that the dremel isn't quite powerful enough to feel very stable while performing that operation. Time to comb through the archives yet again to help decide on a router model and binding method. Thanks for all your sage advice everyone!

Poter Cable combo mount/plunge router is a hot deal, I sold mine when I was injured for much needed $$$ at the time - now I have a crappy B&D, I wish I hadnt sold it.   
If you ask me its the best deal for a high quality router that will do whatever you need it to.
Cheers
Charliewood

[QUOTE=WayneC] [QUOTE=crowduck]
Wayne,

Can you give a description of how you built this router sled, the parts used, and sources? Looks pretty slick.

CrowDuck [/QUOTE]

Chris,

The sled is pretty simple. The base is a piece of 1/2" MDF about 20X30" (big enough to place a joined back or top on it)and a couple of 3/4" plywood scraps. The rails are two 1" aluminum angles from Home Despot.

For the sled part, I got a piece of acrylic from the local Woodcraft store to mount the router on. They sell them as router baseplates. I cut a couple of 6" pieces of the aluminum angle and bolted that onto opposite edges of the acrylic piece. The rollers are bolted to the angle pieces and ride on the rails. I found the rollers in the screen door / sliding door repair aisle at Lowes. Home Depot had some plastic ones, but Lowes had metal-with-bearings and I thought those would be smoother rolling.

My router came with a detachable base which I bolted to the sled. Total cost of materials for the whole thing was less than $30. I will probably add some hold-downs in the future to help hold the wood flat to the base.

There are two downsides I experience when using this thing. The first is that I don't have dust collection on it, so I have to use it outside. The second is that when using a straight router bit, the bit leaves tool marks on the wood. I'm going to try a 1/2" downcut bit to see if I get a cleaner cut. As it is, I use this thing to get to within ~0.01" of my final thickness then switch to my RO sander and scraper to remove the last bit of wood along with the tool marks. [/QUOTE]

Wayne,

Thanks for details, I like that alot! If you don't mind a suggestion, how about this to 'hold down' the stock. Drill holes in the MDF base, and on its underside build a shallow sealed box with a connector to a shop vac, and make it a vacuum table.

And, could a Wagner Safety Plane be used in a router rig like this, instead of a router bit? I've only read of it being used on a drill press, buy why wouldn't it work in a router? I've never used the Wagner, and am a newbie, so maybe it's a dumb question. Would it be dangerous? I'm guessing I'd need a large, heavy router for stablilty.

CrowDuck

_________________
Chris Nielsen
Soquel, CA.

Chris,

The vacuum hold-down idea is a great idea. I was thinking about building something similar after looking at the one CTH Luthiery sells.

I would stay away from mounting the safety planer on a router. A big heavy bit like that might be dangerous in a router. I have never tried it, but others here might have experience with that.

A 1/2" bit seems to work pretty well. I thicknessed a joined top last weekend. It only takes a couple of minutes to make a complete pass over the entire piece.

_________________
53% of all statistics are made up on the spot
http://driftwoodguitars.blogspot.com/

[QUOTE=WayneC] Chris,

The vacuum hold-down idea is a great idea. I was thinking about building something similar after looking at the one CTH Luthiery sells.

I would stay away from mounting the safety planer on a router. A big heavy bit like that might be dangerous in a router. I have never tried it, but others here might have experience with that.

A 1/2" bit seems to work pretty well. I thicknessed a joined top last weekend. It only takes a couple of minutes to make a complete pass over the entire piece. [/QUOTE]

Wayne,

Thanks! Just to be clear(for me), it looks like you move the router 'laterally across the stock, right?
Then move the stock foreward, under the router 1/2" for the next pass? Do you move the router back and forth in two directions?
And one more question, can you do this on a top with a rosette inlayed?
Thanks again,

CrowDuck

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Chris Nielsen
Soquel, CA.

That's right, although I actually move the router 'up and down' and I move the stock right to left because then the router kicks the woodchips away from me. So the router only moves in the "y" direction, not "x and y".

I haven't tried it with a rosette already inlayed yet although I don't think it would be a problem. I think the process would be something like: Smooth the top side, inlay the rosette, scrape it flush, flip the stock over and remove the excess wood from the back.

So far I have gotten the top to the final thickness before putting the rosette in.

_________________
53% of all statistics are made up on the spot
http://driftwoodguitars.blogspot.com/

Check out the next-to-most-recent Shopnotes mag for plans for a thickness sander. (Width needs to be increased, though).

This is on my summer to-do list.

_________________
Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

I'm still 'musing' on the idea of rigging the Wagner Planer on a router. I think a 'beefed up' sled like Wayne's could work. Think I'd use 2X4 lumber in place of the aluminum 1" "L" rails, with heavy duty 'drawer slide rails' attached inside in place of the rollers, 1/4" or 3/8" Lexan for the sled attached to the inner race of the drawer slide.
Might be an alternative for those w/o a drill press. Wayne's original appears to accomplish that beautifully, this is just 'another spin' using the Wagner.
Thoughts??

CrowDuck

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Chris Nielsen
Soquel, CA.

[QUOTE=crowduck] I'm still 'musing' on the idea of rigging the Wagner Planer on a router. I think a 'beefed up' sled like Wayne's could work. Think I'd use 2X4 lumber in place of the aluminum 1" "L" rails, with heavy duty 'drawer slide rails' attached inside in place of the rollers, 1/4" or 3/8" Lexan for the sled attached to the inner race of the drawer slide.
Might be an alternative for those w/o a drill press. Wayne's original appears to accomplish that beautifully, this is just 'another spin' using the Wagner.
Thoughts??

CrowDuck [/QUOTE]

Chris you'd have to be very careful, the maximum rpm for the wagner is only 6000rpm. The torque, and gyroscopic effect produced by the Wagner at any greater speed could be disastrous especially for the router bearings and potentially for anyone in the vicinity. A Wagner running at 20000rpm would scare me.

Colin

_________________
I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Colin,

Thanks! That's just the kind of feedback I'm after.
Perhaps one of those HF router speed controls would 'control the beast'. I wasn't aware of the max rpm's for the Wagner, or for that matter what a router produces.
I will 'proceed with caution', considering your information.

CrowDuck

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Chris Nielsen
Soquel, CA.

Chris, I'd like to emphasize what Colin is saying. The Safe-T planer needs to be firmly mounted in a true running drill press with an accurately set up table to work properly. Any play in quill (sp?) or a poorly set up table and you get uneven cutting cutting action, tear out, a tendency to grab the work piece, excessive vibrations, you name it. Mounted in a router, even with a sturdy sled and ran it, say at 3000 rpm (which is max on my drill press) sounds like a recipe for disaster!

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin