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A new guy, once again. Please bear with me

I've seen jigs for cutting soundholes and grooves for rosettes with a dremel/laminate cutter. Pretty pricey from StewMac and LMI. Then there is the Lee Valley circle cutter using a drill press. And finally, a router base that you attach to a pin and apparently groove to your heart's content eg the "precision Circle jig'

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx ... at=1,43000

Now I'm starting to get confused

Help anyone?

Thanks in advance

Steve

The first two guitars I made, I just put a 1/2" thick baltic birch plywood base on my router, and I drilled the holes I needed to cut the rosette channel and the soundhole. This was a bit tedious but it worked fine, just to a lot of test cuts to make sure you get it right. I think Mario Proulx still does his this way.

Now I use a base that I made based on one Tony Karol showed here a couple years ago. Than Sylvan Wells made some along with details of construction on his website here. This is a great base to make and honestly, it's pretty easy to make too and very inexpensive.

Apart from those two suggestions, the Lee Valley router base with all the holes in it will work but may be limiting to the sizes they have pre-drilled on the base. The Stew-Mac base is good but maybe more expensive vs the Karol/Wells router base. LMI have many options to chose from and I'm sure all work well.

My money goes to making my own as per the Karol/Wells detail, but I'm cheap and I like to make tools.

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Steve buddy what do you have if anything right now i.e. drill press, Dremel, laminate trimmer? If you have a laminate trimmer or are OK with purchasing one I agree with Rod and making your own base.

If you have a Dremel and don't want to purchase a laminate trimmer the Ste-Mac base works great with a spiral down-cut bit.

If you have a drill press fly cutters work but I don't like them much. You need a perfectly level table on your drill press and these things create so very much vibration that they can walk a table top drill press right off the table if it is not bolted down. Also I don't think that fly cutters are very safe. Forget to retighten one of the set screws and you have a steel projectile in your shop......

Let us know what you have and what you want to spend that that will help a great deal?

I'm curious about this as well. One thing my first build showed me was that I really love working with hand tools. Now I'm leaning toward learning how to cut soundholes, rosette and binding/purfling channels by hand. I could go with something like the rosette/circle cutter and the gramil that LMI sells. (Or maybe build homemade versions like those demonstrated here in the forum archives.) Before going that route I'd appreciate hearing what others think about tackling these processes by hand. Anyone care to share?
Thanks,
George

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George :-)

I just finished making one for my Ridgid laminate trimmer. I spent all of $2 on it because I needed longer screws for the sub-base and they were metric. I used the micro-adjustable feature on the bearing edge guide. I made a piece to replace the bearing portion that had the pivot pin in it. Seems to work like a charm. I tried posting pictures of it, but I'm not having much success.

Darrin

Thanks Hesh, I've got pretty much the whole package, a dremel, a couple of routers, a floor-mounted drill press...

I'm lucky compared to a bunch of the guys starting out here. But I guess the question is, what's the most effective way to do things? The most inexpensive? And to Moocatdog's point, I also like working with hand tools, and would certainly be willing to look at doing things that way.

And once again, thanks to everyone for all the help.

Steve

For what its worth my first 10 or so guitars had soundholes and rosettes cut using an ice cream stick and violin purfling cutter blade. Made for very crisp edges if handled carefully but was tedious all the same. After talking with a friend at a big name guitar company I sprung for LMI's rosette cutter that is used in the drill press. My friend had about 4 of these (which I could only afford 1) and had them set up to his different rosette styles and said they were great. With the one I have I can change/setup for a new rosette (if necessary) and be ready to cut in 20-30 minutes and can cut the rosette troughs in a top in about 15 seconds. I must say I love this thing. Right now I have three tops that will all take the same D 28 style rosette and it will take me all of about 5 minutes to cut them all and be ready to glue in rosettes.

I do still, however, use the stick/blade method for cutting out most of my soundholes still as seen in Cumpiano's book, "Guitarmaking, Tradition and Technology".

Best of luck with your project.

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Mooncatdog,
Indeed I'm getting better and cleaner results having switched over last year to the LMI hand cutter. True, it is a bit awkward to adjust cut depth and radius, but it has good stability and feel in use. The clean cut depends on the blade adjustment (don't set the blade beyond the bevel so that the edge "plows" the wood) and the direction of the cut (always along with, not "into" the grain). I do four light passes each 90 degrees in rotation to get the cut started.
I'm still using the Stewmac/Dremel to remove the bulk of the stock right up to the handcut edge.
I'm finding this to be the optimal combination.
Best
http://www.guitarsbydavidlaplante.com/

David,
Thanks for your response and for sharing those helpful tips.

Steve,
Sorry for the slight hijacking of your thread. I've had this on my mind for a few days and your post really resonated with me.

Best to all,
George :-)

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George :-)

Thanks everyone, but if you could only pick one for the best results/most efficient, what would it be?

Thanks

Steve

I borrowed some ideas from Sylvan Wells and Tony Karol to make this one. Took me an afternoon to build it, didn't cost much. It works really well.

http://www.patfosterguitars.com/circlejig/

Pat

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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

I will be having some available soon, seeing as a couple of my students wanted one, I figured I would make up a few .... or by the next swap meet ?????

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

If I were to go the manual route, what would be the best way of clearing out the waste? Small router plane? Chisel?

Thanks

Steve

I have several precision router jigs in stock. Email me or check my web site for the particulars.

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Sylvan
http://www.wellsguitars.com

Chisel worked pretty well for me. As Todd mentioned, a classical rosette is pretty easy if you just make the whole channel at once. I set my circle cutter to the right depth, and made concentric circles at the right depth. This gave me a way to control the depth with the chisel. When the lines were gone the depth was right. I found it very easy. One good trick is to cut two slots pretty close together on the outside and inside edges. Work to the inside slot, and just nick off the last little bit between them. Then you won't catch an edge and gouge your top at the edge of the rosette.

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Waddy

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Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I had a request to post the URL of making the precision router base on my web site. It also gives details on purchasing one from me. So, here it is! http://www.wellsguitars.com/Articles/Precision_Router_Base/Router_Base.html

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Sylvan
http://www.wellsguitars.com

The first time I used my router base from Sylvan with my PC 310, I was astonished at how smooth it made the entire process and how precisely I could dial it in.

Yep ..... its a thing of beauty ....

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

I would like to use as few motor tools as well.

http://mysite.verizon.net/nostberg/chapter7/step20.htm

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