Posted by Sharecropper on April 7, 2011 at 11:05pm
I posted this in discussions originally, but thought it might of been missed by some............So here it is again ! I got the idea for the fret jig when looking at DrByte's blog on how to make a scale fret template out of a aluminum Swanson yardstick obtained at Lowes. I cut the yard stick in half and clamped the two halfs together. Then I used the metric side of the yardstick to mark the fret scale on. Then took my Harbor freight japanese flush cut saw ( fret saw) and cut through both pieces of yardstick every place a fret goes. I then mounted the two pieces on a stick of wood the width of my neck,using a wood stop at the end to align the halfs and to serve as a stop for the fretboard. This works great!!
My name's Sharecropper and I have problems cutting straight ! ha! This improves my fretboard makeing 1,000%. If anyone decides to make this jig I would shim up the wood used for the base at least an 1/8 of an inch. So you don't have to cut so deep in to yardstick. I always eye my cuts to the depth of the teeth on the saw, but you could put in a hard metal stop. Also ..... keep an eye on how your jig wears over use. The fret saw can cut the jig and may make it inaccurate. I haven't used mine enough to tell. Please let me know what you think. For those of us that can't cut bread straight I thought this was the greatest thing since sliced bread !
Comments
I like it!
Nice Idea. I'll have to give it a try. My fretboards are all tediously sawed freehand, not always with great results.
-Rand.