I’m starting a new collection of shorter, more in depth videos on building guitars. I’ll be taking one piece of the process and explaining it a little bit more than I might while doing an entire build. This is the first installment of my Guitar Building Basics, video series. Today, we’re making fretboard blanks.
My process to make a fretboard blank is very simple. If you can machine boards to a certain size, you can make a fretboard. First, I start out with my piece of hardwood and make some careful measurements to determine how many boards I can get out of that piece. I make my fretboards 1/4″ thick. When you’re measuring, make sure to factor in the thickness of the saw blade and know how much material you will lose to the blade. On my particular piece, after cutting and planing, I can get 2 fretboards from it. Now, its just a matter of making the cuts.
I first joint one edge on the jointer. You can use a hand plane for this is you’d like. I like to start out with one perfectly straight edge that I will use as a reference edge throughout the rest of the process. Next, I’ll rip the piece on the table saw to my desired width. For my necks, I like to start out with a width of 2 1/4″. If you need yours a different width, that’s easy to adjust. Now I can resaw it on the bandsaw to get 2 blanks. This part can vary depending on the size of the board you started with. If you have a thicker piece, you may get more fretboards out of it, and you might not need to resaw if its thinner. Now I can send them through the planer followed by the drum sander to get them to my desired 1/4″ thickness. At this point the blanks are ready to be slotted and have the fret markers installed. That’s another video for another day.
If there’s a piece of building a guitar that you’d like to see in more depth, please let me know. Leave a comment of the video, or even on this post. Let me know what you’d like to see. Thanks for stopping by.