Always Retooling

I've built a lot of tooling and jigs to build electric guitars. Now I'm having to build and acquire more and modify some of my existing investments to adapt to the new demands of acoustic building.

There are a lot of ways to do every step of guitar building and I'm just getting into it and I'm not one to just follow in the footsteps of others, obviously. I look at all that's out there and weigh how well I think they work overall and come to my conclusions. Radiusing the fretboard is one thing everybody has their own solution for. I created my own jig for radiusing the fretboard once it's glued onto the neck stock. I like this approach as the radiusing and surface planing to flat is done once it's been attached so it's more likely to be true overall. As long as my jig, with aluminum rails and bearings is true, then the neck will be true.

With acoustic necks, with the high heel, I'm having to jack the whole rig up another inch. Instead of eyeballing it. I did another version of my design to visualize the new neck blank in the rig to determine how high it needs to be and overall reconsider how I will make it work, including how I will attach the neck stock to the pedestal etc. I thought I'd share this process with you...