Pictures for Greg and fingerboard taper.....

I didn't spend much time in the shop tonight as it was a busy day, but I did get to cut the fingerboard taper to the neck width. I used my router tapering jig to do this. It basically is the same idea as I did with the neck blank, first I lay out the center line of the fingerboard, then mark the nut width and 14th fret width, and then mark the taper line. I use those lines to line up to the edge of my jig and run it through the router using a flush cutting bottom bearing bit. It sure is a lot faster than using a shooting board and sandpaper! Right now the fingerboard is just a pencil line wider than the actual width it needs to be. I still need to rout out the width for binding and I will do it much the same way except I will use my binding router bit. It makes quick work of the job.

I also took some pictures for Greg of my fret slotting jig. Hopefully you can get how it works by the pictures. If you have questions, just ask and I will try and explain.

First up, pictures of the slotting jig. Here you can see the fence with a cut through so I have something to line the template with.

This is a fingerboard in the jig with the template (printed using Wfret) taped to it. You can see the cut through slot to the right of the clamp.

This is what it looks like with the clamps on it holding a blank. This was before I made a change to the fence by adding a top cap that hangs over the fingerboard by about 1/4". I ran the think kerf saw through that upper fence to get the visual guide.

This picture you can see the modified fence. The clamps are removed because I only have two of them and I use them on a lot of my other jigs! On the bottom you can see two guides that ride in the miter slots of my table saw. It is critical that each part of this setup is dead square. There can't be any slop in the guides, and even 1/2 degree out of square will mess up the fret slots. Take your time to get it right! I have the guides so they fit snug in the slots so I actually need to give a bit of a push to make it slide. That assured that there is no slop at all.

The under side of the jig.

A closeup of the fence.

Here is the fretboard with my layout lines.

It is clamped in the tapering router jig. The cut line is lined up with the edge of the wood so the flush cut bit will cut right up to the layout line.

This is how it rides through the router. The tape is there to help resist chipping of the slots.

After the cuts. You can see the two pencil lines on either edge are just visible.

The fingerboard on the neck. Now I need to re-cut the fingerboard using my binding bit to narrow it by the thickness of the bindings. I will do the same setup only the binding bit just skims over the jig board but the bearing rides along it.