Finger Board Tricks?

Actually on a guitar fingerboard the spaces are not equal in any way except depth. Also there is a crown on the visible face of the fret board. I would suggest you hit Stewart-MacDonald's web site at

You could make an indexing fence using a couple of 3/8-16 pieces of threaded rod, some nuts and a couple of pieces of wood.

One piece of wood is clamped to saw table to serve as a fixed fence.

The two pieces of wood are connected together with the threaded rods with the wood having thru holes, using nuts to lock in place.

Since threaded rod has 16 threads/inch, one revolution of nut = 1/16".

Now have the means to index the smaller wooden piece as req'd to make equally spaced cuts.

Lew

TS Aligner?

Set up an indexing pin. Once that is done, the cuts are quick work. I have also made a finger board by gluing lined paper to the piece of wood--either cutting with a bandsaw or table saw.

Small, shopmade miter box and an 0.002" "Blitz" aka Eberle model railroader's backsaw. Lay out all fret slots relative to the nut. The

compass trick where you swing arcs from the frets is nearly impossible to pull off accurately due to accumulated error.

Send the wife and kids out to a movie, and consider decaf. You want to get into a deep Zen theta state with no distractions.

Non-waterbased glue keeps the paper from stretching while you're sticking it on.

Non-waterbased glue keeps the paper from stretching while you're sticking it on.

Look at the TS miter jigs made for doing finger joints. You could setup something similar with an index pin. After you make the first cut you move it over the index pin, then rinse and repeat.

HotRod wrote:

Look at the TS miter jigs made for doing finger joints or box joints. They use a little pin that fits into the last cut. You could setup something similar with a slanted index pin. After you make the first cut you move it over the index pin, then rinse and repeat.

HotRod wrote:

Why wouldn't making the cuts on each end, moving the fence and then making the next cuts be fast enough? The secret to making evenly spaced cuts is to move the fence by the same amount each time. Not much of a secret, huh? Oh well - if it was a secret I wouldn't have been able to tell you.

Nix on this post. After I sent it I realized that I had mixed it up with another thread.

Would someone please explain to me what the OP means by "finger board"? He said, at the beginning of this thread, about seeing his other thread. Well, I didn't see it and have no idea. If he is, as some have implied, making a fingerboard for a stringed instrument, half of these replies are useless information (for this project). Stringed instrument fingerboards are NOT evenly spaced.

I believe he means a featherboard, to hold material in alignment as it passes through a sander or some such. His previous post actually calls it a featherboard instead of a finger board. I too have my moments.

Thank you.

That's what I originally thought with my replies. If that's the case, then I would stand by my suggestion earlier posted. Reading through other replies I thought I had goofed up and that the OP was talking about finger joints. I saw the posts about fret spacing and just assumed those posters misunderstood the OP.

Oye - this one is taking too much work.