{"id":1990,"date":"2018-01-15T09:16:32","date_gmt":"2018-01-15T14:16:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amymakesstuff.com\/?p=1990"},"modified":"2018-01-15T09:16:32","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T14:16:32","slug":"making-a-guitar-fretboard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amymakesstuff.com\/?p=1990","title":{"rendered":"making a guitar fretboard"},"content":{"rendered":"

My first homemade guitar had three main objectives: learn how to make a fretboard, learn how to install a truss rod, finish as soon as possible. So this post is about that first goal.<\/p>\n

I found a scrap of cocobolo at my local wood store just thick enough to be the fretboard and long enough to also be the front face of the guitar head. I did a bunch of sanding to get it to an even thickness (forgot to take pictures of all of this). I decided I wanted to have a radiused fretboard instead of flat, so I started by making a radius sanding block.<\/p>\n

I actually tried 3D printing, but it was really really slow. So I gave up long before my block was a useful length. Instead I turned to a much faster process, laser cutting. The two holes are for dowels used to align all the pieces in gluing.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0980\"
laser cut pieces for radius sanding block with holes for alignment dowels<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After gluing the stack together, the radius surface was still quite uneven due to the slight draft on each layer. I did some sanding to take off the really high peaks, but decided it was faster and easier to smooth things out by just gluing a thin sheet of metal over all of it.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0990\"
sheet metal to smooth out all the laser cut layers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"IMG_0991\"
foam applies more even pressure on the sheet metal as the epoxy cures<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"IMG_1009\"
finished 12in radius sanding block<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Next I drilled some shallow holes to accept maple fret markers that I made using my homemade plug cutter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The photo below also shows the ‘jig’ that helped me cut the slots for the frets. I used the water jet to cut the aluminum plate that the fretboard is double-sided-taped to. The plate has holes that are spaced the way the frets are spaced. So with a pin on my miter box, I can easily get accurate spacing for all the slots. I forgot to take pictures of all that, too…<\/p>\n

\"IMG_1276\"
slots cut for fret wire and holes drilled for markers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"IMG_1277\"
markers glued<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After the glue dried, I flush cut all the markers and began the long process of sanding. Started with 80 grit and worked down to about 220. I used double sided tape to adhere the sand paper to the radius sanding block.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_1278\"
sanding jig with rails that keep the radius block aligned. lots of sanding<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"IMG_1280\"
done sanding, finally<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"IMG_1282\"
so satisfying<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With the slots cut (and the fact that my blank was quite thin to begin with) the fretboard is quite delicate. I used a heat gun on the aluminum plate side to weaken the double sided tape, and then used a card to shim them apart.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_1470\"
removing the fretboard from the fixture plate<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Then I marked out the taper shape and roughed it into shape on a belt sander.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_1471\"
drawing out the taper shape of the fretboard on the backside<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"IMG_1472\"
rough shaping of the taper on a belt sander<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After this I glued it to the neck and then hammered in the fret wire – hopefully all detailed in a post coming soon!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My first homemade guitar had three main objectives: learn how to make a fretboard, learn how to install a truss rod, finish as soon as possible. So this post is about that first goal. I found a scrap of cocobolo at my local wood store just thick enough to be the fretboard and long enough […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,19],"tags":[58,71,99,108,118,129,154,231],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/amymakesstuff.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/img_1280.jpg?fit=1024%2C768&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amymakesstuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1990"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amymakesstuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amymakesstuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amymakesstuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amymakesstuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amymakesstuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amymakesstuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amymakesstuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amymakesstuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amymakesstuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}