Guitar Fretboard

[rivercitysaddlery]

Has anyone out there in laserland made a guitar fretboard? I have a friend who makes guitars who was wondering if it could be done on the GF.

[evansd2]

Prototype tenor ukulele

Long story short, I made a tenor size ukulele with my Glowforge. This is a prototype for a potential class I am going to do for my daughter’s school. They have no power tools, but surprise surprise they have a Glowforge! The parts, with the exception of the top layer of the fingerboard, tuners, nut, and bridge were all made of medium and thick draftboard. This is the result. [IMG_2850] If you want to skip the TLDR version, then don’t go beyond this. I thought I would share some of the steps I …

is where I’d start.

[redshift]

Annnnd I’m too slow. Came here to say this!

[hide]

Hi @rivercitysaddlery.
I recently made a tenor ukulele with my Glowforge and I did indeed make the fretboard with it. Originally I designed the entire fretboard with proof grade draftboard, but I was concerned about its longterm durability and also wanted some strengthening. I’ll have to dig up the exact dimensions but it was about half proofgrade and half maple laminated together. The fret slots were engraved at .023" wide which is the tang thickness of Stewart-Macdonald’s fretwire. In this iteration, I could not get it deep enough without making the slots wider so I just did one pass and then used the engraved slots as a guide and cut them deeper with my japanese fretsaw (also from Stew-Mac). Simple. One day I’ll get the right formula to do it all with the laser but since the settings will change depending upon the wood, I think this method of using the engraved slots as a guide and finishing with the saw is the most practical. After all getting the fret spacing correct is the real challenge in this step and the laser and proper prep-work on the svg file takes care of that. Hope this helps.

[beerfaced]

Brilliant.