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In re-reading Cumpiano and Nathelson, they recommend 9/32" (or 0.28 inches) for their fret boards. I measured a few of mine and they come in around 0.22 to 0.25 inches. Since I've got 5 new blanks to take down to thickness, I'm debating as to how thick or thin to go. What do you typically do? The fret boards I'm looking at are EIR, and to date I've only used ebony or EIR.
Thanks,
Marty

I start mine at .25 inch prior to sanding the radius in.

Mine also start at 0.25"

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Mine start at .270 with an eye to .250 as the finished thickness...

.250 is a nice number to start with.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I've made hundreds of fretboards for other folks and the vast majority order them with a .250 finished thickness. That said, I've got a couple customers that think that's too chunky and go for about .230

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

I taper mine, approximate 3/64" to 1/16",with about .250" thickness at the headstock increasing toward the sound hole. One may say why do you do that? I don't use a compound radius board and if one use a single radius the thickness of the side edge will decrease as it goes toward the sound hole. To me that is ugly. If one taper the thickness the side edge will either increase in depth or remain the same as it goes toward the sound hole. Makes it easier for me to look at it.
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

Of course Martin has CNC machines to help with perfect dimensioning. Their fingerboards are .235 on center at the nut end and .245 on center at the extension end. I spoke to the engineer about this variance and the explanation made perfect sense. It has nothing to do with action, but rather appearance this slight variation compensate for the natural thinning out of the edge of the fingerboard as it approaches the extension end. The idea is to make all the "edge position dots" look more equally centered along the entire length.

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

It stands to reason. I offer something called "Auto-Radius" on my fretboards where instead of angling the fret plane, I calculate the compound radii that will give an constant edge width.

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

What does that typically come out at?

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Pat

for my long scale bouzoukis I shoot for .260-.265" off the thickness sander and a final thickness of .245-.250". For guitars I shoot for .230" final thickness. That seems to be about the thickness of all prewar Martin guitars that I have measured.

It depends on the rest of the dimensions. For example though - a Martin dimensioned fretboard with a 12" radius at the nut gets about a 20" radius at the end of the fretboard to make everything work out. It was quite surprising when I first developed the model at how flat the fretboard has to get for everything to work out.

As a side note, I've gotten some very good reviews feel wise from customers that have gone the auto radius route.

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

Thanks for all the replies. Think I will thin to about 0.25" on my drum sander. Should have mentioned that to date I have built only classicals and that I don't radius my fret boards (I do taper towards the soundhole end). There is more to think about for steel strings, such as a radius and side marker dots, etc; things I haven't worried about to date but will consider in the future. Thanks again.

I am in the .230"-.250" camp myself. Although I have recently noticed that I tend to like guitars a whole lot that have required a good bit of material to be removed from the fretboard due to a re-radius/re-fret. I've done a few and it just seems to open things up. I read somewhere about Leo Fender starting to thin out his Rosewood finger boards at some point after sensing a detrimental effect the Rosewood was having on the tone of the instrument. That may be hearsay though.


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"I'm not going to say that perfection has never been achieved. However, if it has, it probably went unnoticed due to it's lack of character."

6 mm

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.