Big Shop-Made Dovetail Clamp

by Bob Gleason

Originally published in American Lutherie #142, 2021



A friend sent me a link to a New York Times article on the Martin Guitar factory. It had a number of photos, one of which showed a worker fitting a dovetail with a unique clamp. It was a big wooden C-shaped frame with a large screw on the top.

It only took a second for me to realize that such a clamp would be useful in my shop. All of my ukuleles and guitars have dovetail neck joints, and I’ve had a number of incidents over the years trying to clamp that joint. Cam clamps have a way of coming loose, as do sliding bar clamps. The clamp in the Times photo seemed like it was just the ticket for that task.