Posted on July 21, 2026July 21, 2026 by Dale Phillips A Better Approximation to the Rule of 18 A Better Approximation to the Rule of 18 by Mark French Originally published in American Lutherie #132, 2017 Historically, luthiers often used the Rule of 18 to lay out fretboards for guitars and other fretted instruments. (See “Classic Guitar Intonation” by Greg Byers, AL#47; Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Four.) While builders seldom now use the number 18 as the coefficient for calculating fret positions, the name is still used as a shorthand way of identifying the method. While 18 is a very convenient whole number, it is far enough from the exact value of 17.81715 that noticeable errors can accumulate. Still, it is often convenient to use a simple approximation for a long decimal number — many of us have used 22/7 as an approximation to π and 355/113 is even better. With this in mind, you can replace the number 18 with 285/16 and lay out frets very accurately. Let’s see where these numbers come from and why the approximation works. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on July 15, 2026July 15, 2026 by Dale Phillips It Worked for Me: Junk Plane Makes Sanding Beam Handle It Worked for Me: Junk Plane Makes Sanding Beam Handle by Aaron Cash Originally published in American Lutherie #143, 2021 I use a large aluminum radius beam to radius my fretboards by hand. I plane the edges of the fretboard to approximate the shape of the radius, then use woven-fabric double-stick carpet tape to affix it to my shooting board (Photo 1). The beam is hard to hold onto, so I used some of the carpet tape to attach an old handyman plane body to the top of the beam. I run the beam down the edge of the shooting board to make sure I won’t drift to either side (Photo 2). This is much more comfortable, and it’s not permanent, so I can use the same plane body on different-sized beams. ◆ Photo 1. Both photos by Aaron Cash. Photo 2
Posted on July 15, 2026July 15, 2026 by Dale Phillips New Frets in Old Nibs New Frets in Old Nibs by Ben Haskenhoff Originally published in American Lutherie #142, 2021 A 2004 Hamer Monaco Elite recently passed over my workbench for a refret. It seemed like a good opportunity to take some pictures of my process for refretting a guitar while keeping the binding nibs intact. Photo 1. There were deep grooves and flat spots on the first several frets, and the wear went farther up the neck as well. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on July 8, 2026July 8, 2026 by Dale Phillips It Worked for Me: Shop-Made Deadblow Hammer It Worked for Me: Shop-Made Deadblow Hammer by Steve Kennel Originally published in American Lutherie #144, 2021 I’m poised to fret a fresh guitar neck and had, in the past, used a well-polished machinist’s hammer. It just seems a little too metal-on-metal for the project, so, well, a dead-blow hammer with non-marring faces seemed to be the thing to get. Some days you just don’t want to leave the driveway and online shopping is annoying. So I scouted around the premises and came up with this. It’s kinda ugly but I really like the price and it exceeds my hopes for its functionality. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on June 29, 2026June 29, 2026 by Dale Phillips Review: Michael Bashkin Fretting Course from ObrienGuitars.com Review: Michael Bashkin Fretting Course from ObrienGuitars.com by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #144, 2021 Fretting Course with Michael Bashkin Video download ObrienGuitars.com, $134 Twenty-seven lessons, 4:21:49 run time Viewing Michael Bashkin’s video fretting course strongly reminded me that lutherie is a thinking person’s profession. No matter how we learn an operation, and even if we work in the darkest isolation, the work slowly begins to evolve in technique, first in our minds and then on the bench. The goals of lutherie — to produce and maintain the most playable, best sounding instruments — never change, but the ways we get there change all the time. It is difficult to imagine that a luthier might so slavishly follow a teacher that his methods never develop beyond his initial instruction. Michael Bashkin is certainly one of those thinking men, and this course is not a generic description of applying frets to a guitar neck that we’ve all been exposed to those over the years. It is an in-depth method of discovering problems in a guitar neck/fretboard and solving them in such a way that the frets are perfect once they are installed, no final fret dressing required — just polish and play. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
