Cutting Fret Slots

I have done this several ways, when i first made instruments I measured and hand cut each slot, it was a tedious process and easy to make errors when you are dealing with fractions of a millimeter. I think moved to a manual system from LMI that used templates for various scale lengths. This was a much more accurate system but still a bit slow.. So today I started using a special blade in my table saw and a little home made jig and the templates form the LMI manual system.. Works great and is very quick and accurate, takes about 1 minute to slot a fretboard.

The fret board is attached to the template with double sided tape and just held against the jig which has an indexing pin.

Table saw, jig and template

Indexing pin

In position to cut slots

One minute later

Nice and accurate

Blade with stiffeners