Posted on February 1, 2026April 1, 2026 by Dale Phillips It Worked For Me: Bandsaw Guides It Worked For Me: Bandsaw Guides by Rick Rubin Originally published in American Lutherie #127, 2016 I purchased an old 14" Rockwell bandsaw from the late 1940s at a garage sale, and it didn’t take me long to want to replace the guide blocks. Steel-against-steel didn’t seem like a great idea. They tend to induce unwanted vibration. They also heat the blade which can, in the worst case, draw some of the temper from it. I looked at some of the roller bearing guides, but I didn’t like any of ones I saw that fit my saw, and I didn’t want to lay out that much money. I remembered looking at an early-20th-century Crescent bandsaw and remembered that it had the remains of some dense wood for the lower guides. On investigation, I realized it was lignum vitae, also known as guaiacum. Lignum is incredibly dense at 84 lbs./cu. ft. and is waxy/oily. I recalled that lignum had been used as self-lubricating pillow-block shaft bearings in ships. In fact, it’s still used as an industrial bearing material, from ships to hydro generators, and is being touted as an enviro-friendly alternative to eliminate greases and oils that can leak into water supplies. I had some lignum vitae; so I used the original guide blocks as a pattern and cut the wood blocks to match. I’ve used them ever since. I can pinch them against the blade without concern and resurface them on the belt sander as they wear. I’ve run my original set for over eight years and still have a lot of service left in them. ◆ Both photos by Rick Rubin.
Posted on January 16, 2026January 17, 2026 by Dale Phillips Harvey Thomas and the Infernal Music Machine Harvey Thomas and the Infernal Music Machine by Tim Olsen Originally published in American Lutherie #11, 1987 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie, Volume 1, 2000 Remember what the term “Japanese guitar” used to mean, back when beatniks roamed the earth and Elvis was still kinda nasty? The Beatles hadn’t landed and I was in the third grade when my big brother Jim brought home a brand new Japanese guitar. Loosely modeled after a classic, it was already caving in from the load of its steel strings. You don’t see them like this anymore, man. Painted-on binding, decal rosette, door skin luan plywood, basswood (or worse) neck, nice sharp ends on those rough brass frets. I was totally fascinated! But the word fascination found new meaning a year later when my even bigger brother Dick came home from college with what might as well have been the Messiah Strad. It was a very plain, small bodied New York era Epiphone archtop with a badly repaired crack running the full length of the soundboard, and he had bought it cheap in a pawn shop. The hand of mortal man never created such perfection. This was a gift from the angels! Oh, the lovely dissonances that it spoke as I whanged it with a juice glass slide! When Dick was begged, he would strum “Who Put the Overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s Chowder.” 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 January 16, 2026January 16, 2026 by Dale Phillips Making Kerfed Lining: A Huss & Dalton Shop Story Making Kerfed Lining: A Huss & Dalton Shop Story by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #72, 2002 and Red Book of American Lutherie, Volume Six, 2013 The focus of all my early lutherie work was to stay cheap. Prepping locally obtained alternative wood was time consuming, but back-and-side sets of cherry, birch, and walnut cost almost nothing in cash. This was a time when Indian rosewood sets cost in the mid-$20s, and I never bought any. I did allow myself the one-time luxury of a fine set of koa for $45, but otherwise I stayed away from the tonewood market. Being so destitute, there was no way I was going to pay for commercial lining. I forget the price of lining in 1980, but a guitar’s worth cost more than my wood sets, so I made my own. Not that it was a work of art. Nor did I care much that my lining was pretty rough. I had scant prospects of selling my instruments, and I wasn’t worried about impressing myself with the interior of my instruments. This had to change as the market opened up and the expectations of guitarists grew accordingly, but initially all my lining had to do was hold the plates to the sides and leave enough material to support the binding and purfling. My early lining left plenty of material. 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 January 15, 2026January 15, 2026 by Dale Phillips Getting Good Inlay Results with Inexpensive CNC Routers Getting Good Inlay Results with Inexpensive CNC Routers by Jon Sevy Originally published in American Lutherie #144, 2021 Prices for basic CNC routers have dropped dramatically, to the point where small machines in the “3018” class cost only about $250. The name comes from the workable cutting area of 30CM×18CM, which is too small for cutting many of the parts of a guitar (neck, body outline, and so on), but perfect for creating inlays for the peghead and fretboard. The router can be used to cut out both the inlays (in shell, wood, and other materials) and the pockets into which they will be glued. If you have done this by hand, you’ll know just how exacting and time consuming this work is. I use a jeweler’s saw and bird’s-mouth platform to cut the delicate inlays from mother-of-pearl and abalone, and a Dremel with a selection of fine bits to cut out the pockets, using a high-magnification headpiece so I can cut precisely to the lines. It’s tedious work, especially for the repetitive fretboard inlays, so I was interested to try a CNC router as a way to offload this task. There are many resources available for getting started with one of these routers, including tutorials and software packages for developing designs and controlling the router. The routers are widely available on Amazon; I purchased a SainSmart Genmitsu 3018 Pro model based on the reviews (Photo 1). Some assembly is required, but it was relatively straightforward to get it up and running. Most routers come with software that can be used to control the machine, but it’s often proprietary and may be somewhat limited in functionality. However, the machines generally use a standard open-source firmware called GRBL, which makes it easy to use other software packages to control the router. Though the software supplied with the Genmitsu router is adequate, it’s Windows-based software and I run Linux on my laptop, so I chose to use the open-source bCNC package instead of the Genmitsu software. But all of these software packages support the two essential operations for router control, which are manual positioning and execution of G-code to automatically drive the router. G-code is a simple text-based language to specify the position of the cutting bit. 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 January 15, 2026January 15, 2026 by Dale Phillips Slotting Fretboards Slotting Fretboards by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #70, 2002 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie, Volume Six, 2013 Many luthiers skip the tedious chore of slotting their own fretboards, and with good reason. Preslotted boards are readily available in most of the common scale lengths, and I’ve never used a prepared board that wasn’t accurately made. However, if you wish to escape the use of ebony or rosewood, or if a strange scale length is calling your name, you may have no choice but to slot your own fretboards. Accuracy and neatness are the attributes of a properly slotted board. Completing the job efficiently while keeping your temper under control requires a few basic tools. Be warned, however, that the frustration factor is harder to control than the necessary accuracy. Fretboard wood is usually the hardest and most abrasion resistant that can be found, and it doesn’t give in to slotting politely. It’s possible to buy your way out of this situation. It’s ironic that the cost of machine slotting is hardly more than a dedicated miter box, and can be a lot cheaper than a deluxe miter box. Assuming, that is, that you haven’t invested in a table saw just to cut fret slots. 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.
