Best advice I’ve heard for years! I believe making your own tools and modifying purchased ones is not only rewarding but helps develop the ability to think up creative methods and solutions for tasks that might never come to mind when one thinks only thinks in terms of existing tools.
Thank you Kevin you have really inspired me. I made a router sled out of my old tile cutter, and a fret slotting jig from an old mitre box . I'm afraid I'm better at making tools and jigs than I am at making guitars at this point😂
Hi Kevin, Excellent content and flawless presentation as usual. I believe that there's a class of gifted individuals like yourself who start by trying to build something and wind up being more satisfied with the process of building the jig. I've been looking for a name for the job title and have yet to succeed , but toolmaker/ machinist is a good start. Well done sir.
Great video as usual .. I love your idea about make your own tooling. I was thinking how I’d modify your jig to make compound radius fretboards. Question, can you do a video on lining the bottom of the fretboard with the neck and the top of the guitar and what’s your practical way to have a no-gap joint between the bottom of the fretboard, neck, and top of instrument. Thanks again!
Nice tool Kevin. I just want to point out to others whom may watch this. Your original design using a full extension drawer slide was a little sloppy because the slide was used in a flat orientation. It wood require a little more total height to the overall jig to use them in vertical orientation. They are much more stable used in the way they are designed to be used. It would also require two slides instead of one as in your original design. I agree the rails and bearings you used are much more ridged but finding them could be hard to do affordably.
I'm sure you're right, that correctly oriented drawer slides would do the job very well. If I had to buy the linear motion components you see in the video, I would have taken a different, less expensive approach for sure. I happened to have these components from scrap gathered forty years ago and in fact, I took the motion rods out of a panel router I built and repurposed them for this tool. That's the advantage of having junk around to work with. Otherwise i would have been searching Amazon for other solutions.
Best advice I’ve heard for years! I believe making your own tools and modifying purchased ones is not only rewarding but helps develop the ability to think up creative methods and solutions for tasks that might never come to mind when one thinks only thinks in terms of existing tools.
A great video!
Thank you Kevin you have really inspired me. I made a router sled out of my old tile cutter, and a fret slotting jig from an old mitre box . I'm afraid I'm better at making tools and jigs than I am at making guitars at this point😂
Hi Kevin,
Excellent content and flawless presentation as usual. I believe that there's a class of gifted individuals like yourself who start by trying to build something and wind up being more satisfied with the process of building the jig. I've been looking for a name for the job title and have yet to succeed , but toolmaker/ machinist is a good start. Well done sir.
How about "Special Shape Wheel Re-inventor"?:)
nice smooth fretboard. i like your philosophy on tooling and hardware
Great video
Thanks!
Great video as usual .. I love your idea about make your own tooling. I was thinking how I’d modify your jig to make compound radius fretboards. Question, can you do a video on lining the bottom of the fretboard with the neck and the top of the guitar and what’s your practical way to have a no-gap joint between the bottom of the fretboard, neck, and top of instrument. Thanks again!
Nice Jig! In my case yer preaching to the choir.
Nice tool Kevin. I just want to point out to others whom may watch this. Your original design using a full extension drawer slide was a little sloppy because the slide was used in a flat orientation. It wood require a little more total height to the overall jig to use them in vertical orientation. They are much more stable used in the way they are designed to be used. It would also require two slides instead of one as in your original design. I agree the rails and bearings you used are much more ridged but finding them could be hard to do affordably.
I'm sure you're right, that correctly oriented drawer slides would do the job very well. If I had to buy the linear motion components you see in the video, I would have taken a different, less expensive approach for sure. I happened to have these components from scrap gathered forty years ago and in fact, I took the motion rods out of a panel router I built and repurposed them for this tool. That's the advantage of having junk around to work with. Otherwise i would have been searching Amazon for other solutions.
Great video. Could you outline how you arrived at the geometry of the radius runners?
They are a 16 inch radius. As the cutter follows that radius, it cuts a parallel radius at 16 inches.
Most of these jigs I’ve seen have the router moving and not the fretboard. This is probably sturdier.