Posted on October 1, 2026October 26, 2026 by Dale Phillips Product Review: Stewart-MacDonald Fret Scale Rules Product Review: Stewart-MacDonald Fret Scale Rules by Harry Fleishman Originally published in American Lutherie #85, 2006 Whether we are building instruments or repairing them, measuring accurately is crucial to the work we do as luthiers. Measuring for frets, nuts, saddles, basic scales, and compensation, are really not things done best by eye or feel. Accurate work takes accurate tools. I remember a distant time when a depth gauge measuring down to 1/64˝ seemed amazing. A dial, or even digital, caliper in thousandths now seems critical. When checking for high frets we are working in the realm of tenths of thousandths! Of course, the real issues are how close a tolerance is necessary for a given job, and at what resolution can we actually work. I have a friend who began his woodworking career using a Numerically Controlled Router. Each day he would machine out his mahogany parts and then the next morning he would measure them and, when they were several thousandths off, start all over again. He didn’t realize that not only is it not feasible to work mahogany in thousandths, but that the wood shrank or expanded more than his acceptable tolerances in any period of even a few hours — just because of humidity changes in his shop. And mahogany is one of the more stable woods. 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 August 7, 2026August 7, 2026 by Dale Phillips “Restomodding” Wall-Hanger Guitars “Restomodding” Wall-Hanger Guitars by Roger Häggström Originally published in American Lutherie #144, 2021 Cheap guitars were made in great numbers all over the world at the beginning of the last century. In Sweden, the driving force behind a burgeoning interest in guitars was the independent church movement. The prevailing sentiment was that every able-bodied parishioner should be able to play three chords on a guitar at prayer meetings and fundraisers (Photo 1). Many of these instruments still exist, mostly in unplayable condition. I have found ways to restore these wonderful old guitars and make them play and sound better than ever. I love the bass-balanced sound of old-style ladder bracing in a small steel-strung parlor guitar. The complex sounds keep me wanting to play another chord. Modern X bracing gives more bass but also less varied tone, in my opinion. 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 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 June 29, 2026June 29, 2026 by Dale Phillips A Field Guide to Mandolins A Field Guide to Mandolins by Graham McDonald Originally published in American Lutherie #132, 2017 The aim of this article is to give you a broad overview of the diverse world of mandolins, and to some extent, what can go wrong with them. I will not spend a huge amount of time discussing Gibson and Gibson-style mandolins. They are the industry standard for mandolins in America, and there has been a lot written about them with lots of other information readily accessible out there on the web, some of which might even be correct. This will be more about other sorts of mandolins that a customer might bring to you. Instruments called mandolins (or in Italian, mandolino) appeared in Italy in the middle of the 17th century (Photo 1). They were small, in fact tiny, lutes. This photo of Italian builder Carlo Ceconni with one of his mandolins gives you a sense of just how little they were (Photo 2). These mandolins are very lightly built, with the soundboards a little over 1MM thick and string tension of around 3KG per string. Scale lengths were 11.5˝–13.5˝ (29CM–35CM), which was likely to have been determined by the pitch standard of where the builder lived. It came down to how high the gut top string could be tuned in any particular climate. They were tuned in fourths with four, five, or six double courses of gut strings. The 6-course tuning, low to high, was g b e´ a´ d˝ g˝. These are the instruments for which Vivaldi wrote his mandolin music, and I am told that the mandolin parts in those concertos falls much more naturally under the left hand with the tuning intervals mostly in fourths rather than fifths. 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 12, 2026June 12, 2026 by Dale Phillips Let’s Catch Up With Graham Caldersmith Let's Catch Up With Graham Caldersmith by Juan Oscar Azaret Originally published in American Lutherie #132, 2017 Hop on a plane in Boston. Fly twenty-seven hours to Sydney, then connect on a prop plane to Port Macquarie on the coast of New South Wales. Rent a car (no, the steering wheel is not on that side, dummy), and drive 60KM southwest. (Stay to the left, the left, the LEFT!) Oops, here comes a traffic circle — drive around clockwise, cars on your right have the right of way, remember to exit left, and stay left. Why is that left wheel always grabbing the shoulder... where the heck is it, anyway? Now out of the city (whew!) and on beautiful Australian farmland — rolling green hills in the mild August winter. Past the logging town of Wauchope and the hamlet of Byabarra. The road narrows to a winding switchback climb up the steep slopes of Bago Bluff, and finally we find ourselves on a high plateau of rich farmland in the town of Comboyne, NSW, population two hundred. Comboyne is the home of luthier Graham Caldersmith and his partner Angela MacPherson (Photo 1). On a recent trip to visit our son in Australia, I took the time to spend a delightful day with Graham and Angela in their enchanting home/workshop/tea house where I learned much about lutherie and acoustics, and enjoyed their wonderful hospitality. 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.
