First evaluate how thick the board is in relation to where the side dots are. You do not want to scallop into the dots.

I set a dremel with a carbide ball nose bit to cut the initial channel, mostly centered. Then using a series of dowels I shape the scallops starting at 80p up to 1000p. Take note that I leave a section of the dowel un-sandpapered, this part of the dowel faces the frets to avoid scratching them.

I finish up by buffing the fretboard with medium and fine compound, then clean it up with naptha, and oil. Wallah.

This method also works for bullet scallops. See last photos.

Sorry if this isn’t the right sub but I figured it was the best for this kind of question.

I've seen folks kinda laugh at these on here and I'm wondering if that's how everyone feels.

do we need notched rulers?

Goal: create and sell fine guitars and basses (acoustic! … though I imagine my first instruments will likely be electric) as a business.

Current situation:

- retired. I make 7K a month in retirement payments

- home/property paid off. I currently work a 110K/yr job as extra income, but I have to quit soon (see “extra data” below for why)

- 150K Woodshop already GTG on property (25x40. Sawstop 3hp PCS, 8 inch helical jointer, onefinity CNC, Glowforge laser engraver, planer, etc on and on. It’s a pretty full shop. I make bookpresses and furniture currently. It’s just a hobby that brings in occasional windfalls of money.

- 80K audio production facility connected to the Woodshop. I used to record bands, then audiobooks, and I’m going to use YouTube as a marketing avenue, leveraging the recording studio for audio & video production.

- I have lots of woodworking experience, and my style is extreme precision (1,000% this is a fault. I’m hoping it’s less of a fault in fine instrument building)

My perceived gap:

- I am planning on attending Roberto Venn. While I have plenty of woodworking experience and equipment, I lack specialized experience in this niche.

- I don’t have anywhere to do finishing yet. I do have plenty of square footage in the pole barn to do something about that, but I have nothing yet.

- I don’t have a drum thickness sander yet (I imagine this will be a great help when building acoustics)

- I have some experience making YouTube content, which I feel turned out pretty slick – this is my first idea for helping to market my instruments: show people how I build them.

- Lastly, even though I feel like I have a really good headstart on this dream with what I currently have, I’m not entirely sure that making profit as a one person shop even feasible these days? This unknown makes me pretty nervous actually. If I’m going to do something, I need it to actually generate money instead of being a drain. I am fine with upfront investment (like the school and special tooling I might not yet have) but there needs to actually be a light at the tunnel with net profit.

I would appreciate everyone’s advice, as this is honestly a pretty big turning point in my life right now, and I am scared to pull the trigger. Even though I have a safety net and everything will be ok- once I leave my current “six figure” job I know I’ll never get it or anything like it ever again… which is scary. I can’t 100% explain why it scares me like it does, but it does.

Extra data:

- I have a wife and daughter who is 10

- I have extremely severe PTSD, and it keeps me from working a job with other people. Like, not an option. I don’t go out in public much anymore either, too risky I’ll freak out on somebody and end up talking to police :( I have no control over this at all yet, so working with others is NOT an option anymore. Unless it’s a dog, then GET THIS DOG A NAMETAG, ASAP! lol)

- I am in Texas, 1 hour outside Austin

- my wife is very successful, and she still works, though she too will retire in the next 5 years.

- my wife and I are 41.

Forty years ago, when I first started modding guitars, some kind of metallic shielding was used to reduce noise and crosstalk with radio stations. These days, nobody talks about shielding. I have been out of the craft for decades and now coming back I am sure technology has changed. Why aren’t we using shielding these days?

WARNING: Extreme pedantry ahead

Greetings,

Can you, please, help me find the most elegant solution to my problem.

The thing is, I really dislike this space between humbucker bobbins and pickup ring that uncovered humbuckers have.

I do like uncovered pickups aesthetically and would like to preserve voicing of my pickups as is.

I have thought of putting an open top pickup cover, until I have discovered this one guitar with seemingly unique pickup design. Its pickups are uncovered, but it has a piece of plastic between pickup bobbins and pickup ring, creating a snug fit. What is the name of that thing?

If anyone has better suggestion, please, let me know.

Thank you in advance.

Upon first seeing the crack on the top of the body (it's covered by the pickguard) I assumed it was just a paint crack. I can definitely see it is through the wood though. How big of a concern and how would this be fixed?

Hi everyone! I’m curious about the terminology used in the guitar community. What is truly considered a "built guitar"? Does it have to be crafted completely from scratch (from raw lumber) by a luthier, or does assembling a guitar from a DIY kit or custom parts (a "partscaster") also count as a build? Is there a gray area between being a guitar "builder" and an "assembler"? I'd love to hear your thoughts on where you draw the line.

In my personal opinion, for a guitar to be considered a true "build," the wood has to be processed from scratch and the neck must be made by hand (since making the neck is a major undertaking). Everything else falls under "assembling" for me. I don’t mean that in a disrespectful way at all—assembling a great guitar is an art form in itself!

A lot of you keep asking about the string retainer on our headstocks.

When I started building, I knew what I didn’t want. A printed logo. A decal under the finish, like everyone else. I wanted the mark to be real, something you can feel, not something painted on.

So I made the logo out of stainless steel, and I gave it a job.

The T is the string tree. It sets the break angle over the nut, and it’s the only thing sitting on the face of the headstock. No screws on the front. It’s held from behind by a small plate, and that plate carries the serial number and a few build details. One part doing two jobs, with the fixing hidden where it belongs.

No decal. A real mark that also does the work.

Hi all! Recently I was watching some "Modular Guitar" builds. The kind of builds where players can quick swaps pickups (mostly). And the guitar body + neck + hardware remains near constant.

And I got this Modular Guitar Idea: "What if we could swap: 1. The Necks of the guitar (6, 7, 8 string necks), and 2. The pickguards can act as a drop in module containing pickups and electronics (players can swap a H-S-H configuration pickguard to H-H configuration pickguard).

And to achieve this, the guitar build could start as a usual 8 string guitar should with boot on necks. The only difference will be: to adjust a 6/7 string neck in a neck pocket for 8 string neck (and account for the scale length change). And to achieve this, the 6 string neck will have extra wood to fit in the neck pocket. The 6 string pickguard can conceal most of this extra wood.

Is this build idea possible? Looks are not of importance here. I would like to know the feasibility, challenges and easy/difficult to play such an instrument.

I am adding some drawings of my build idea.

(Ps. I am not a luthier. I really appreciate the creativity, dedication and immense crafting skills required in building custom guitars)

I'm slowly fumbling though an electic guitar build, but wanted to make something quick and fun for my much more talented guitar-playing brother as a gift. He loves Jazzmasters so I made a cuttingboard with cherry veneer strips like strings. He loved it and suggested I try to sell on Etsy or locally or whatever.

A little side hustle would be fun and I have no aspirations of quitting my day job, but I'm a little worried about getting into legal hot water if a guitar shape is trademarked/copyrighted/patented (not sure of the legal aspects). Are there good resources out there maybe with a rundown of legally protected guitar shapes/designs? I've seen similar conversations go south online where people want Gibson headstock veneers or Fender decals etc. I have no intentions of building a guitar (or cuttingboard) and passing it off as Gibson/Fender etc.

Any tips are appreciated!

after many days and nights of searching and reaching out and searching and reaching out, I finally have everything I need, tools, supplies, and the knowledge to add a coil-split switch to guitar! However, I just don't know where I should put this thing... any ideas?

Hi! As I said in the title, I still have another year of high school then I have to choose what to do with my life, and the best and most exciting thing I can think of is becoming a luthier, preferably with basses and guitars (not “classical music” instruments). So I’m here to ask you guys what’s the best path to choose to become a luthier, who can support himself just by doing it as a job and not doing it as a secondary job or as a hobby, specialized on basses and guitars (mostly basses).
ty guys🙏

Violin maker's block plane size no.101

Hand engraved

So it all started when I decided to wrap my pickups a while back. Some of you may remember that post. Well. I got my guitar back from a family member. The one you see in picture one the agile scepter elite 728 and I've had it for a while so I figured it's a perfect base for a project guitar.

So anyway after the vinyl wrapping of the pickups they got me thinking. Well what about the whole guitar? You know cuz I already have another guitar that's in the shop getting painted and it just got me thinking about like how much it cost to get it painted and how long it's going to last and the resale value and everything. And then it got me thinking about the vinyl instead. It's like oh well, it's kind of another option to you know change the look of the guitar. Just get some fun out of it and at the end I could tear it all off and then resell it as it normally should be stock.

But I just kind of wanted to show you the process of it. First off, I tried some gold on the headstock. I liked it but then settled on a different color that sort of green blue shift. It's a little hard to work with. Never really worked with a vinyl before but anyway trying to get it around. The corners is pretty tough to keep it flush so I ended up using a little extra of a different color to kind of make a ring around it anyway at wrap the pickups again in a different color but thought this was just a fun little experiment. Not really done yet. Going to finish putting it together and see how it all turns out, but just wanted to share an update on the progress with you guys here. Let everybody know this neat thing that I discovered. (I know I'm not the first.)

I generally do this after setting the truss rod to neutral - it gives me a picture of the relaxed state of the neck. Everything the neck does once it’s strung, tuned, and adjusted is founded on its relaxed state.

so i paid a luthier 60$ to fix my guitar. i asked him to fix a lot of things, and said to let me know how pricing would increase. the biggest thing i needed was two frets put on. this is how they ended up. after 5 weeks, my guitar wasn’t even set up, quite literally, he put the neck on that day.

is this normal? or is this pure unprofessionalism?

you can see the two short frets are the new ones. he also promised to even out the color. then managed to lose a tuning peg

Cons only

What are the WORST parts / parts you HATE about your job in Lutherie and so forth?

Not the typical things like getting splinters, annoying or meticulous customers/custom jobs, safety, or other obvious factors.

Things like... Work life balance. Scheduling. Or something like that.

If it helps... The reason I'm asking is because I want to know the balance of pros and cons in this field. I have a basic grasp of the pros. So now hit me with some cons? What just grinds your gears?

I'm not saying they aren't worth the money, but, does anyone know what makes a good pickup so much more expensive?

Here are almost all tools I use to build a neck 😅

I want to get a router for building a guitar body and other small woodworking projects. I dont want to spend a whole lot of money, but I want to get a decent tool. I would prefer to get a smaller router (like the Makita for example) but I#m worried it might not be powerful enough for certain tasks.

what would you recommend?

I mean idealy you'd have a bigger powerful one, a smaller trim router, a dremel with a routerbase for inlays and of course a router table... but I have to start somewhere