Official Luthiers Forum!

I would like to know if most OLF'ers are making their own fingerboards or buying them. If you are making your own what system (machines or free hand) are you using for slotting and radiusing??
If you are buying them premade, from who and best price? Where is the best place to get blanks (for the best buy) and is there quantity discounts out there? I am going to be needing quite a few this winter and hadn't made up my mind if I should buy premade ones or machine up my own. I not sure how much time I am going to have free to build. Time is an issue. At any rate would like to here your ideas. I know there are some great ones out there. Thanks.

Ron

I think that from an efficiency point of view purchasing pre-radiused pre slotted boards is the way to go.

However, this doesn't give you the aesthetic control that you can get by making your own, so that's my choice. I generally buy several pieces of wood large enough to have numerous uses - fingerboard, head plate, rosette, bridge, bindings, tail graft etc, rather than a fingerboard blank, then when I build I have lots of options for what goes where. I am slotting on a table saw with the stewmac blade and a home made jig. I am using a preslotted fingerboard as a template. Works fine for me.

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David White, Toronto

"All my favourite singers can't sing."

I have a power slotting system I built that works pretty good, and I have the LMI miter box, which works great, but I don't care for the Japanese Saw -- I much prefer the older type saw they sell for this box.

I radius them myself. At first I just did it with radius blocks, but now I use Craig Holtden's radius jig -- which works great.

Blanks? I usually get them where I can, but recently I have been getting Madagascar EBONY from Gilmer, Madagascar Rosewood (they call it Palisander but it is Dalbergia Baroni) from Gilmer, and BRW from Steve @ Colonial.

I think it is good to build your own to know how to do it so you can build any scale/radius you want, but there is something to be said for having them pre radiused and slotted. Just be careful if you are going to have someone else do it. Not everyone uses the same scale.

For instance, if you buy a 25.4" fingerboard from LMI and a 25.4" fingerboard from SM they are not the same. The difference is SM uses 25.34". So just make sure you know what you are getting.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

I make my own. I resaw the blanks, then either run them through the planer, or the thickness sander. My radius jig was posted here a couple of months ago, and I slot them using a Stewmac mitre box and the back saw from Stewmac. I need a better saw, theirs dulls easily.

Al

I like the boards from LMI for the small fee for the fret slotting service it's a good deal. You can specify how many slots and stuff you want.
Randy Allen also has a good fret board srevice.Jim_W38986.8915972222

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

I built a radius jig according to Al Peebels plan and it works really well so i make my own now but i do not have time constraints or any deadlines to meet for any customers but still would recommend this jig and a fretsaw blade from Shane and a sled and template for the table saw, it was really accurately made with the WFRET program.

I also use LMI for radius and slotting. They do a great job. Very consistant, and good quality. Very happy with them.

Watkins

John pays me $50 for every referral.

I go both ways, I suffer from WAS and as a result have purchased a fair number of blanks. I likewise have purchaed from LMI and have been very happy with their quality and service. Strangely enough though, when time allows, I do enjoy making my own and would recommend to all to give it a whirl. I now have the world famous Poirier/Peebles jig thanks to my friend Serge, but have not tried it out as of yet.

I built a very simple shooting board setup and glued in a stop at one end a little thicker than the blank. I then have two 1X3" trued edge guides that I clamp in place on either side of the fingerboard blank leaving the right amount of gap to allow my radius sanding block to pass freely and take off the excess down the sides. Block the other end with a clamp and back and forth down the channel until my forearms feel like Popeye the Sailor until done. Then I hand sand to where I want it to be. This is all done after I have slotted down to my thickness mark and tapered the board to my width spec's at the nut back to the soundhole.

Great work out and works

Mike
White Oak, Texas

I make my own with Stew-Macs Mitre box and radius blocks,
and elbow grease.

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Anderson Guitars
Clearwater,Fl. 33755

I make my own (like most things).

As with everything else, time is a concern if you are making them one at a time, but you can save a lot of money at a very fair hourly rate if you make five or ten while you are at it.

I use the StewMac table saw blade for slotting; I got the indexing jigs from either LMI or StewMac (I don't remember which). The system works perfectly and efficiently --- it takes ten minutes to set up the blade and jig, and then about two minutes to slot each board (if I'm taking my time).

For radiusing, I built a jig for my 6x48 belt sander that can do compound radius (although I never use compound radiuses). It takes about fifteen minutes to set up the jig, and then about three minutes per fretboard.

So if I do just one fretboard, it takes me about thirty minutes to slot and radius the board given all the time to set up the jigs. If I make five, it takes about ten minutes per board. Ten is less than eight minutes per board. It starts to get pretty efficient at five.

I buy my wood at Austin Hardwoods, although I'm going to start buying more at Eisenbrand.

The best part about making your own --- whether it's fretboards, binding, bridges, etc. --- is that you get to choose exactly what section of the grain to include. Efficiency is also a big advantage if you make five or more at a time.Kelby38986.9620833333

I just hooked up my table saw and hope to be able to start using it soon. So I was thinking of buying the fret blade and make a sled. And Kelby's thoughts on mass production seem reasonable. I was thinking it would take a lot longer even for doing more at once. But if I can get away with 5-10 minutes per board that would be great.
Has anybody used Bois de Rose for fingerboards? If you have how does it compare to ebony BRW or EIR?
Thanks for your input. I will have to look at some of these other suppliers of woods.

I've used stewmacs preslotted.

I really don't have the accuracy and patience to do it right with a mitre box & saw.

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My soundclick xx luthier blog xx luthier soundclick

On my Custom Deluxe models I make my own from pre radiused blanks because I dont have a jig set up for radiusing as of yet. On my Student models I use pre-radiused and slotted because the price I charge for these is based off of a much lower labor out put.

On the ones I slot I use the StewMac freting fixture. I have radiused a few blanks using the Stewmac 16" aluminum FB radius sanding block. Man it is a bunch of work though.

All that said, unless the fretboard is somthing really special like a BRW or some other exotic I think I will be moving to buying more pre radiused and slotted in the near future on both models.MichaelP38987.4098148148

Since buying Shane's table saw blade, I now slot my own using StuMac's slotting gauge and a home-built sled.

As others have stated, hand raiusing is tedious, but I'm in no hurry. Piece of cake...thanks again Shane.

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

I have set myself up to cut my own fretboards. Here in Western Australia things are quite arid once you move inland from the coastal crust.

Due to the lack of available water and nutrients, the trees (read as scrub) grow very slowly. This slow growth dictates that most of the desert timbers are VERY hard and of course dimensionally quite small. Not a good thing for back and side sets, but when it comes to things like fretboards and bridges or even pins and turner keys, we certainly have the goods here in WA.

The hardness or density of these desert timbers is generally up there, or in excess of cocobolo or ebony. Some of this stuff weighs in at around 1300kg per m3. So, just a warning for any nautically minded amputee luthiers among us, you really do not want to build a wooden leg from this stuff.

Not only is it be too heavy to lug around all day, but it is note worthy that this stuff does not float, not at all, not even just a little bit when it is totally bone dry. If you fell overboard, or if your stopper came off your leg causing it to poke a hole in your boat, you would sink like a stone

Anyhow, last night I resawed a small log of Mulga ( Acacia Aneura) attached is a couple of images of one of the fretboards I converted out of the smallish round that I had. This piece has been shellacked to show figure. Not only is it just as dense as Coco, it even looks like Coco, what do you reckon, do you like the sap?



Probably not the same intensity of ink lines as Cocobolo, at least not in this bit, but it still looks pretty and it rings like a piece of plate glass. Also, because moisture is low, even when green, this stuff is very stable as a rule.



Cheers all, hope you enjoy

Kim

I use a home made sled and Stewmac's template. The blade I use is also from Stewmac. I hand plane the boards to a compound radius or use a home made 12" radius sanding caul, hand planing the boards close to final dimesion first. Like JJ, I'm in no hurry either!

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Michael, how do you like the aluminum Stewmac sanding block? They seem expensive but it seems to me it might be the most accurate way to sand the radius, short of building a router or belt sander jig.

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Jonathan Kendall, Siloam Springs AR

Al, do you have plans for the radius jig?
-j.

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“If God dwells inside us like some people say, I sure hope He likes enchiladas, because that's what He's getting”
-jack handy

Jon, I love it. I don't do my final Fretboard leveling till the guitars is finished and neckand fretboard extension bolted and glued. I do this as insurance of FB to bridge relationship. I have a couple wooden sanding blocks from 6" long to 12" long. but the weight of the 16" aluminum block make maintaining a constant plane so much less work. It is worth every cent.

Thanks, good to hear some positive reviews before I put the cash down.

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Jonathan Kendall, Siloam Springs AR

I buy my own ebony or other woods, and then process it. I use the LMI power-slotting rig. I also made a radiussing rig for my edge sander similar to the LMI one. I don't like it that much though, and have had mixed results. I'm sure the problem is my design and rig, not their design.
Eventually, I would like to radius my fretboards on a cnc.

For those who like a great package deal, John Watkins is making fretboards with alignment holes that will work perfectly with his cnc'd necks. They're pre-slotted and arched and ready to go.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Pre-slotted/radiused all the way. Why make life too hard??!!

Kudos to all those who make 'em themselves...Sam Price38987.4993055556

I make my own too. I just think it gives me more options. I use a Stew Mac blade in the tablesaw and an a homemade sled. The sled doubles as my kerfing sled for the Fox style linings. For radusing I have been using the sanding blocks but will be building a radiusing setup like Al's very soon now.

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Dave Rector
Rector Guitars