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Private member DiscussionDiscussions

Custom Fingerboard Slotting/Milling in Canada?

Looking to get a custom fingerboard slotted, radiused and cut for block inlays, preferably in Canada. Any leads much appreciated! 🙏

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Cascadia in BC will do customized fretboards. They haven't carried much stock lately but it's maybe worth an email. If you go to any blank they're selling, at the bottom you'll see they offer custom C…

Experienced Builder and Red Wing Grad

Howdy folks, I'm a 2026 graduate of the two year guitar program at Red Wing (Minnesota State College Southeast). Between my two years at Red Wing I worked at Collings Guitars in Austin, TX for two years in the acoustic neck department, shaping and finish sanding ~2000 necks, radiusing and gluing ~750 fingerboards, and pressing ~100 sets of frets. I also spent a couple months in the finishing department level sanding and pore filling ~300…

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Lucas does great work.
Private member DiscussionAcoustic Repair

Retopping a ladder braced Stella - dimensional questions

I am repairing a damaged Stella parlor guitar. The original top was birch, plain sawn at 0.100 inches thick, ladder braced with multiple beefy braces and irreparably split, warped and generally separated from the sides. I want to keep the instrument ladder braced with a movable bridge and upgraded tailpiece, all firsts for me. I would be grateful for input on 2 issues. 1. The new top is Adirondack spruce that I’ve reduced to about 0.110…

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I don't have much to add but I am working on the exact same guitar at the moment and had a question. How did you get the neck off? I'm doing one of my first few neck removals on this and it isn't seem…
Private member DiscussionAcoustic Builds

Nominal Normal Thickness of Barb Thickness for a .022” Tang Wire?

Let me start with this; I'm trying to find the root cause of difficult fret wire installation of two different SM fret wires. I've spent a lot of time gathering dimensions and experimenting with techniques wich could cause the problem. I enlisted the help of a colleague who arrived at a similar poor performance. His solution was to glue the fret ends/ beat the frets in. My "rather" is to find the root cause so I don't have to go thr…

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Matching the fretwire to the fret slots (and visa-versa) is a huge subject. Dan and I did an entire episode of the Dan and Doug Show just on fret slots. I'll be revisiting the subject of fretwork in…
Private member DiscussionElectric Repair

String radius at bridge & at 14th fret are totally different??

Hi there! Working on a Squire Vintage Modified Jag. relevelled and crowned the frets. Lovely job. Set the relief and action to factory spec. So far so good. With a capo on the first fret, I set the string radius at the saddles to 9.5" using an under-string radius gauge, everything lined up nicely... ...but when I measured the action of all the strings along the 14th fret using my digital nut slotting gauge (expecting a unifo…

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If you adjusted your truss rod and action to factory spec, then you adjusted the radius at the bridge, you changed the string action height. I know some will set the action on both e strings and then…
Private member DiscussionElectric Repair

Open string sitar buzz after nut slot work

Hi all, new to nut slot work world, please can you help me with this mystery? fret levelling, neck relief and string action adjustment all completed to Fender 9.5" radius spec. very happy with that. the next step: 0.011” High E string’s nut slot was a bit low. I used Dave Johnson’s (MI Guitar Craft Academy) “q-tip slot raising method”: the pulled cotton strand, plus extra thin CA glue, to fill the slot, then trim it off once dry,…

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i always use a nut file that is the closest size up from the string gauge. i used a 13 gauge file for an 11 gauge string, and 16 gauge file for a 14 gauge string
Private member DiscussionTools and Jigs

Measured drawing and assembly for Proper Variable Radius Sanding Jig

Doug Proper designed a sanding jig that supports variable concave and convex curves, described in the following Loothgroup article: https://loothgroup.com/post-imgcap/the-variable-radius-sander/ I built one and am impressed with how it facilitates preparing bridges, braces and also allows tracing any radius using the chord formula. I made a rough measured drawing and assembly guide to share, with Doug's blessing. First step, ma…

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Ian Davlin
Thank you John !