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That's where a jig like Brad's comes in .

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Colin—

I think the extra value that Brad’s jig adds is in making it easier to get a uniform hole depth, due to making the edge of the fingerboard level. The jig still needs to ride against a fence to get the holes all the same distance from the top/bottom of the fingerboard. You can get that benefit from just using a fence without the jig. I’m not knocking the jig; I’m thinking of building a version of it. I’m just pinpointing what value it adds.

Why is “uniform hole depth” important?


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To me, it is important because the pearl dots are thin, and therefore the window of what is an acceptable hole depth is narrow. Too deep, and the pearl goes down in the hole, and the fingerboard edge needs more sanding (more narrowing of the fingerboard) in order to have the dot sit flush. Too shallow, and I wind up sanding away more dot than I want to.

I’m only speaking for myself. I know some folks have installation methods where the depth of the hole doesn’t matter.

My local Ace Hardware has one of those little drawers full of bronze bushings. I have thought about getting one that is the right size for the side dot bit and making a little wooden jig that fits over the side of the fretboard to get the hole in the right place with a drill. Put a little tape on the bit as a depth stop and everything is in one small package. Just getting ready to do this job so I might try it

Ed

That's a DIY Dot Doctor, Ed. I bet it will work fine.

That too, both spacing and depth are important. I use a jig similar to Brads, but also takes into account the tapering edge of the fretboard, dropping the height slightly as you go up the FB.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

The last set of dots I put in with a "devil may care" attitude and got "devil may care" results. . I used bamboo skewers I found somewhere and just broke them off and sanded flush so the depth of the hole didn't matter. It was done on a guitar where I tried a lot of new things, some of which didn't turn out that well, on a set of wood that was somewhat challenged. I had my doubts when building it how good it might sound, but it actually sounds pretty good.
The little tool in the picture is what Mohawk sells as a compound tool. It is handy for all sorts of things. I use it in place of a glue chisel for cleaning up excess HHG and also glue slips of sandpaper on one blade for sanding under braces that have popped loose and need regluing. I also use it for mixing pigment powders and stirring epoxy and any number of other things. Handy little tool.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s just that small variations bug some people more than others?

I’m sure everyone strives to do good work and I’m not at all of the mindset that doing it by hand cannot achieve perfect results. I also know from my personal experience that my eye catches even the most minor asymmetry and I get fixated on it. This is a flaw in my character and I’m working on it.

Brad


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Brad, Striving for perfection is not a character flaw.

I do my side dots by hand, I'm super picky so I locate my side dots with a caliper, hell, I'm an engineer and I'm anal, so what do you expect? So yes, you can get excellent results by hand if you know how and you can get excellent results by machine, if you know how. Some good ideas here, for those that don't have their own method, just find the one that works for you.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I've tried most of the methods mentioned in this thread so far. They all work; recently I've been using a shop-made dot-doctor kinda thing, only it has a radiused fence which registers on the face of the board rather than the underside. This is only really because it saves a little time on layout; for years I just used a pair of calipers, awl and pin vise.

One thing I've gone back and forward on is whether the dots should be centered on the thickness of the board (a measurement that changes as a radiused fretboard tapers wider and the edge thickness reduces), or placed a consistent distance from one face of the board (eg 0.115" from the bottom face all the way up the neck)

Strangely, both methods look 'wrong' to me, depending on which way I squint and tilt my head I go back and fourth over which looks 'less wrong'.

I think this is one of those aspects of the craft where (provided you are neat and reasonably accurate) only another luthier who has also agonized over the subtleties of sidedots would ever notice or pass comment.

I've certainly never heard a player comment one way or the other.

It's that fragile balance between wanting to do the best we're capable of and growing with each guitar, and unhealthy obsession.


Raising my hand.

This is going to be too much “big picture” for a thread about something as simple as side dot markers (when you get down to it, I merely offered a tip on an efficient way to use the features of a normal drill press to make the dots look better), but this is how I view guitar building.

There are oodles of little decisions to make when building a guitar; decisions about what you want on the guitar, decisions about what methods to use, decisions about the order in which to do them, etc. Lots of decisions.

For every option considered, I think there are six relevant questions to ask:

1. How will this make the guitar look?

2. How will this make the guitar feel to the player?

3. How will this make the guitar sound?

4. How will potential buyers react to the idea of this (as opposed to their in-person perceptions of 1-3)?

5. How does this affect the durability and repairability characteristics of the guitar?

6. How does this affect the holistic cost of the guitar? Holistic cost includes the cost of materials, labor, required tools and/or workspace, time, environmental impact, health risks for anybody, etc. All costs associated with this option.

For every little decision I need to make, I ask the six questions of each potential option on the table, then compare the answers, and pick the one that makes the most sense to me.

The decision here was whether to keep eyeballing and freehanding the installation of side dots, or take a little more care and use more tools (drill press, fence, end mill, feeler gauge) to get more precise placement and installation.

This decision only implicates questions 1 and 6, and is a pretty normal trade off. Eyeballing is faster, but the results (for my less than perfect hand skills) looked sloppy. Tooling up costs a little bit more in terms of time, but the results look better. The additional time was not significant to me, but the difference in appearance felt substantial. So, insignificant extra cost, significantly better results. Tooling up wins.

Multiply that by 10,000, and that’s guitar building.

I hear that, maybe I'll get there some day.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

doncaparker wrote:
This is going to be too much “big picture” for a thread about something as simple as side dot markers (when you get down to it, ………………. So, insignificant extra cost, significantly better results. Tooling up wins.

Multiply that by 10,000, and that’s guitar building.

Whenever I present something to the Forum I figure people can take what they want from it and use it how they will. Some may find it totally useless while others will take it and build on it.
Drilling side marker dots is something I have to be in the right frame of mind to do it well by hand. I can see where using a drill press and a jig can make it a little easier. I use a simple "L" shaped jig for routing necks, and also use it as a router table fence. I can now see the possibility of clamping a fretboard to it and using it with the drill press to drill side marker dots. No new tooling required. Thanks again for posting, Don.