Australian/New Zealand Luthiers Forum

Hi everyone, I am new to this forum but look forward to reading and contributing when I can. I thought I'd show you my fingerboard shaping jig. It isn't my original idea but it saves heaps of time when shaping Mulga wood or Gidgee Fretboards. The whole process from flat blank to finished fretboard takes about 15 minutes where it used to take at least an hour of hand sanding.

Very nice simple but effective jig there Martin, thanks for sharing & welcome to the forum.
That fingerboard is very shiny too!

I have never seen a combination router / polisher bit???!!!!!!!

what kind of bit are you using, I have similar jig based off of Todd Stocks design on the OLF, and use a mortise bit which if done smoothly and evenly works great....

Hi Wes, I finished the fretboard off with a sanding beam. For the router I use a 19mm wide, carbide tipped straight bit that gets a very fine finish so the sanding is only cleaning up. So far the bit is holding up against the Mulga wood. I haven't tried a gidgee fretboard yet but am keen to try one. I have found that slow and steady works better.

I like it. It's the most straightforward one of its type I've seen.

Hi Martin , it's my first posting but keen to look into this a little further as I mostly do raised action instruments. Firstly do you have this set up for various radius or is it too awkward ? I do like the concept as it's cheap & relatively compact. How you came up with this required some thought I'm guessing. I'm giving it the tick to try & see what mess I can make and let you know.
Squareneck

Hi, I am just doing 12 inch radius at the moment but different radii would be easy. The radius is controlled by the base for the router so you would just need to make additional boxes with the appropriate radius. To get the 12 inch radius I just did the old pencil attached to a piece of string and a nail trick on the floor of my shed and traced straight onto a scrap of plywood. Once I had it cut out I used a flush trim router bit to make a duplicate piece. The whole jig only took about 2 hours to build. Good luck with yours!

A very old thread but I love its simplicity.
2 questions.
Are you still using it?
When tracing a curve onto the rails, I figure you need to allow for the small distance from the bottom of the curved rail to the top of the fretboard. So if that distance is 1/2", then to achieve a 12" fb radius, the radius on the rail would need to be 12.5".
Pedantic and unlikely to be noticeable, but does that sound right?
Thnx. Frank

This fretboard jig looks great and these type of jigs are very good.

In 2023, I posted another method using a special shaped router bit set up on my router table. "Radius the Fretboard using the Router Table". It also works very well and is quick once you have set it up. A number of various radius router bits are available. See photos below

Wayne

Thnx Wayne - I did see your post when I was sifting through the jigs posts.
I hadn't seen those bits before.
I just love making clever jigs.....Cheers. Frank

Another radius jig to check out is the 3D printed one from String Pluckery. About $100 U.S. Comes in a variety of easily exchangeable radii. I tried one of those router bits that you can use to cut the radius aginst a router fence, but did not like it at all. Very touchy tool. The String Pluckery jig does has a learning curve, but the main take away is just don't try to take too deep of a cut. I got no chip out when doing the radius with the slots cut. I also tried different bits than they recommended, but ended up coming back to a 1/4" straight cut. HHS is probably better than carbide, and you are taking a minimal cut, so should last awhile anyway. Although it does not completely eliminate swearing at the process, and I have totally ruined a few fretboards in the learning curve, I really like the jig. Good luck!-Bob

Here is what the String Pluckery radius jig looks like. Very compact. You order it to fit your router, and supply a couple of flat, straight pieces of wood to run it on. The yellow tape is an add on that I use to index the cut. One defect in the jig is that it hides the cut and it takes a little experimenting to figure that out. You still have to run a hand radius block on the fretboard to complete the smoothing, which sounds redundant, but it is very easy compared to doing the whole job by hand.