LUTHERIE TOOLS & JIGS
Fret Tang Remover |
I was building a pair of flamenco guitars, and needed to take the tangs off of the frets above the soundboard so I could just glue them in rather than pressing or hammering them in. I got the idea from watching Paco Chorobo's Flamenco Guitar Building video class at O'Brien Guitars. I was using stainless steel fret wire, so filing them by hand was not going to work very well. I cobbled up a little jig for milling the tangs off of stainless steel fret wire. The picture on the right shows 2 pieces of fret wire, the upper one is "de-tanged: and the lower one is not. |
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Below on the left is a sketch I made beforehand. The other 2 pictures show the jig in-use. It's rotated 90 degrees clockwise from the sketch. The tangs on the fret wire had ground a groove in the brass by the time I was done. It still worked fine, I just hadn't thought about that. And of course I found out later that StewMac has a jig for doing this much better, without needing a drill press, called "The Fret Barber". |
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Below are 2 pictures of my small mobile workbench that I call "the vise squad". Everything in my shop is mobile - it's a small room but I have a very large area outside the shop where I can wheel stuff out to and park when it isn't needed. The left picture shows a guitar body vise, for gently securing a guitar body when routing the neck mortise, and other things. Made out of pipe clamps. The big red vise is a pattern makers vise, from StewMac. I love this thing! And on the other side is a blue Yost quick-release vise. After I got it I realized it's a quick set vise also - squeeze the little lever and you can slide it open or closed, and just use the handle to tighten it. Saves me several seconds a day! |
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