Official Luthiers Forum!

Here's a tip I just discovered for all those of you who use circle cutters to do rosettes and such.

When I was at Frank Finnochio's class I noticed that he had a number of cutters for his circle cutter that had different thickness for the different purflings and inlays he uses.

When I got home I went down to Woodcraft and sure enough they had the replacement cutters for around $8.00 apiece. Seemed a little high to me.

I was looking through Grizzly's big catalog a few days ago in the reading room and found that they had tool steel bits for a metal lathe that had a little cobalt added for durability. They happened to be exactly the same size as the cutters I needed. And they were only $1.95 each.

I reground and sharpened one up today and was very happy with the cut I was able to get with it. I ordered several of them on my last order, so I'm gonna grind them to the various thicknesses I need and I will be able to just swap a cutter and inlay the b/w/b lines or whatever....

Hope this is of some use to someone.

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Dave Rector
Rector Guitars

Describe how you resize them Dave. TIA

I just ground them down om=n my bench grinder (carefully, and dip them in water to keep them cool), then sharpened them up on the Tormek.

I grind mine so there is a back angle and only th very front edge is doing the actual cutting.

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Dave Rector
Rector Guitars

I do this with my ukes (they all have different soundhole sizes and rosette
outside diameters. I just buy the $8 fly cutter from home depot or
whatever and get the bits and grind them to what I need. I've also see
guys take a spade bit and grind it down to cut a three ring rosette in one
shot with a simple fly cutter and a spade bit really ground and modified.
It worked really well.

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John Mayes
http://www.mayesluthier.com

Spade bits, man that's amazing John. and cool.

John, the nice thing is, for the price that you are paying for a new circle cutter - just to get the bit - I can buy 4 of these bits and grind them all to different profiles.

The grinding only takes about 5 or 10 minutes since they are relatively small. You might even be able to use it as is, since it does come with a slight bevel already ground into it.

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Dave Rector
Rector Guitars

I'm not sure if we're talking the same type of cutter here, but here's what I do. The photo shows two different bits and how I ground them. At places (like MSC?) the bits are about a dollar each.

Yeah Pete, that's the idea! Looks like you've found an even cheaper source than I did. Thanks for the info!

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Dave Rector
Rector Guitars

No I'm not using it just to get the bit. On my ukes there are 4 different
soundhole sizes, and likewise 4 different rosette diameters. I use a
separate one for each. I don't care about the money. I care about the
time it takes to change it for each one. That way I just swap the cutter to
match the model. Much less set-up time and time is money.

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John Mayes
http://www.mayesluthier.com

That makes sense. Thanks for the clarification.

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Dave Rector
Rector Guitars