Gluing on the Bridge & Slotting the Nut

Another step closer to strings going on..

Bridge is measured aligned and glued on! The nut is shaped and slotted (it's a black horn nut in case anyone is wondering)

Yes I did remove that stray bit of glue on the left :-)

Jigs and More Jigs

A big and sometimes frustrating part of luthery is building jigs. Here are three, a very simple one for marking the position of the bridge pin holes. one for routing the saddle slot into the bridge  and one for routing the binding channels..

The keen eyed among you will know that I already made a jig for this based on the KMG guitars design. Well this one is similar but I hope an improvement that will work a bit better for me..

Very Simple Jig

Bridge is just clamped in and the position of the holes can be marked with and awl  

Bridge is held in place while saddle slot is routed 

guitar side references on the guide

This is similar to some production jigs I've seen and a static version of Charles Fox's I believe

A big part of luthery is getting the process set up how YOU like it. There are many ways do do each step none of them wrong you just need to find the one that works best for you and finding the right method to route binding channels and do it in a shop with very limited space has been a challenge.

Cutting Fret Slots

For a change I cut the fret slots in the fingerboard the other day. I use the LMI fret slotting jig. I'm thinking of switching to a table saw jig but this method works just fine for now.

The LMI Jig

Does a nice clean job

Finished ready to be tapered & bound