Posted on July 15, 2026July 15, 2026 by Dale Phillips It Worked for Me: Magnetic Table Saw Jig for Narrow Ripping It Worked for Me: Magnetic Table Saw Jig for Narrow Ripping by Bob Gleason Originally published in American Lutherie #143, 2021 Here is a simple jig I use when I cut binding or kerfing strips (Photo 1). For this repetitive operation I needed an easy way to set up to cut the strips and also to add a zero throat to the saw. This will work on any table saw with a cast-iron table. It is simply a piece of cabinet-grade 3/4˝ plywood, cut to an appropriate size to fit your saw table, with six powerful magnets glued flush into the underside (Photo 2). 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 14, 2026July 14, 2026 by Dale Phillips Side Bender and Body Mold Cut from One Sheet of Plywood Side Bender and Body Mold Cut from One Sheet of Plywood by Terence Warbey Originally published in American Lutherie #142, 2021 After reading Mark French’s article about his time in the shop of Charles Fox (“A Guitar Is Born: Attending Charles Fox’s Hands-On Guitar Making Course,” AL#136 and Mark’s series, “The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method,” beginning in AL#139), one idea kept coming back into my mind: “a library of bending forms.” Wouldn’t that be delightful, to have the forms stacked like books rather than my jumble of assembled forms, precariously balanced upon each other on a shelf, collecting dust? I was able to make such a bending form and a matching body mold from a single piece of 24˝×48˝×18MM Baltic-birch plywood, cut into four pieces 12˝×24˝. The bending form uses three upright pieces. They are notched to receive two, also notched, cross pieces. These cross pieces are cut from the spare fourth piece and have a small horizontal piece attached to the bottom of them to easily clamp the assembly down to my Workmate. 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 16, 2026June 16, 2026 by Dale Phillips Two-Step Cutaway Bending Two-Step Cutaway Bending by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #78, 2004 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Bending a venetian cutaway with a particularly tight horn presents a challenge. At Huss & Dalton we tried several times to alter our Fox side bender to reliably create tight cutaways, but with very little success. The add-on bending unit usually seen on benders worked well for blunt cutaways, but when the radii got small, the bender crapped out. OK, this admittedly depended on the type of wood involved. Indian rosewood is so accommodating that we often got away with completing the whole job on the Fox bender. Mahogany wasn’t quite as obliging but is cheap enough that an occasional broken side is no reason for tears. Koa was the driving force behind our search for a better system. It was frequently requested by the discriminating fingerstylists who seem to be the guitarists who want cutaway guitars in fancy varieties of wood. Killer sets of koa are also very expensive and become more so every time they are ordered. Other curly woods are just as hard to bend, but a broken piece of fancy walnut (just to pick a species) isn’t the heartbreaker that shattered koa is. The H&D model MJC was our particular bugaboo. Other builders use tighter cutaways, but the MJC was plenty tight enough to drive Jeff (Huss) and Mark (Dalton) close to distraction. There were frequent war councils among shop members about how to conquer the problem, but most of the ideas and all the tool making fell to Mark. The problem wasn’t bending the horn itself. The spring-steel slats of the bending sandwich supported the wood as it went around the horn enough to prevent breakage. It was the inside bend of the cutaway that caused all the problems. The slats simply couldn’t be pulled tight enough during bending to support the wood. There’s no need to elaborate on the failures. Eventually a bending machine was made dedicated to the MJC (Photo 1). Various methods of bending the wood around the cutaway shoe were tried to no avail. The solution turned out to be bending the wood in two stages. 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 16, 2026June 16, 2026 by Dale Phillips Bridge Shaping and Routing Jig Bridge Shaping and Routing Jig by Paul Woolson Originally published in American Lutherie #79, 2004 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Ah, the bridge. From my research, this extremely important, yet often overlooked, element of the guitar has had little written about it. Many builders I’ve talked to are so daunted by the task of making bridges that they simply buy them premade and stick them on. To me, this is an injustice to the overall design of the guitar, often making the bridge look like an afterthought. You might notice that I use a very nontraditional bridge shape (Photo 1). I’ve chosen a design that complements many different elements of the guitars I build. From headstock, to fingerboard extension, to bridge, I try to incorporate the same design elements. I prefer to make all of my bridges from ebony. However, the following information can be used for almost any shape or wood choice, including standard winged bridges. The scallops of the winged bridge would have to be created in another step which could be easily done on a table saw, or by some other method. 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 16, 2026June 16, 2026 by Dale Phillips An Enhancement to the Outside Mold An Enhancement to the Outside Mold by R.M. Mottola Originally published in American Lutherie #79, 2004 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 The outside mold is a useful tool for side bending. If the side slat is bent to roughly the ultimate shape of the side and then clamped into the mold while still hot and damp, the slat will conform to the shape of the mold while it cools and dries. This works pretty well for the following reason. If you make a bend in wood, as it cools and dries it tends to revert to its original shape. This springback phenomenon causes all manner of grief with some approaches to side bending, but it can be used to advantage when using a mold. Sides can generally be over bent slightly and then clamped into the mold, where they will relax into the shape of the mold as they cool and dry. So for the most part, when using an outside mold you can just bend the wood to only the roughest approximation of the final shape and let the mold and springback take care of the rest. This technique works great for all of the areas where the mold is on the outside of the curve, but doesn’t work at all where the mold is on the inside of the curve, such as at the waist bends in an outside mold. That’s because springback makes the bent sides pull away from the mold at the waist as the wood cools and dries. 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.
