Official Luthiers Forum!

Inspired by so many great threads in this section of the OLF, I thought I'd share some random pics from our shop. (Not my personal shop, but where my licensed production electrics are made.)
Here is some fret slotting being done on the HAAS
Making pickguard templates on the older K2 machine:

Cutting Tenons: Here is a body holding fixture: Neck tooling: Neck holder, different position: Neck contours getting cut in it: This one does an initial fingerboard radius with a concave radiused cutter and adds preliminary relief in the process:
Here's what we get from that:

Here are some phenolic blocks. We superglue shell blanks to these and cut out logos. When done, we put them in acetone to release. We do this for block inlays too, or any other shell shape we need:

And here is the recess getting cut:
Thanks for looking! cheers,
Saul

Hey Saul,

Thanks for sharing.

Is that concave FB radiusing bit custom?

What's the black faced plywood?

Hi Sheldon,
The plywood, Its actually brown and its considered to be called Fin-form, multi-laminate birch. We get it from
North American Plywood Corporation
12343 Hawkins Street
Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670
Tel: 562-941-7575 ext. #201
Fax: 562-944-8368
http://naply.com
We also use garolite XX from McMaster.com for templates. The plywood is less money and holds together just fine.

The cutters are custom made, we get them from RobbJack roughly $180 a cutter buying 6 at a time
http://www.robbjack.com/

Some more shots.
This is where we begin layout for the bodies. There is a shape scribed on the plexi, but what is important is the centerline and the neck joint position. This template gets placed on the glued up spreads and registration holes are drilled outside the waist area. These assure proper position on any number of jigs.

Here is a body blank with those holes:
And a top:
Here is a solid body getting cut. You can see the position holes:

Here are some non carved tops: I think you get the idea
And here is another shot of the body vacuum jig. Top up is on the right, top down is on the left:

Saul I would like to thank you for taking the time to show us the jigs and process you use. I use the index pin system for location as well, but have only attempted to guitars to this point and finished one of them. I am curious if the profile cutter is a carbide tipped, solid carbide or tool steel?

Mike

Hi Mike,
We use a lot of solid carbide, so I bet that's what that profile cutter is.
That reminds me of some of my favorite parts about the HAAS: the cutter magazine:

And the quick change. The horizontal arm changes out your cutter in seconds! Here it is after installing the flycutter:

Saves lots of time in a production situation.

Here is that flycutter in use, surfacing the back of a headstock:

And back to necks.
Here we are cutting a truss rod channel and adjustment pocket. I like a single action compression rod and use a curved slot: