Be sure to watch the video at the bottom of the page if you have not seen the Collins Saddle Mill before. The Mill is vacuum clamped, laser guided and its development history will be invaluable to anyone simply looking for a well performing lam trimmer.

Karl when we developed the Collins Saddle Mill our design goal was to get the slop out of the process of slotting the saddle AND to make it safe and reliable to slot a saddle AFTER the bridge has been glued to the guitar. I repeat we wanted to slot saddles when the bridge has been glued to the guitar first. It's more precise, provides you with options and there was a well known repair need for this tool in the Martin world where in the early 70's some 18's, 28's and 35's had the bridge located on the wrong position.

This mill permitted us the option of not having to remove and replace bridges on the Martins with the bridges in the wrong location. We could instead clean up the existing saddle slot, plug it with matching wood, cut the new slot where it precisely belongs and this permitted these many instruments to finally play in tune and live up to their potential.

The invasiveness of removing a bridge and any possible finish damage and subsequent repairs was completely eliminated by the process making it the best option out here for these Martins.

Dremel tools are terrible and have some of the greatest amount of runout out there. The PC 310 which was the best lam trimmer in the past 30 years or so had been discontinued.

So Dave set out on a mission to purchase every laminate trimmer available and test them all for suitability in a saddle mill. He has perhaps 100 hours of time into just the testing of everyone's laminate trimmer.

Our apprentice Link Van Cleave who is a master woodworker who had his own TV show on the West Coast took on the Bosch Colt and purchased 5 of them and tested them all for runout. He wanted at least one for his own use and ended up returning all of the the Bosch they were so bad....

Dave has a background of being a trained machinist and he wanted minimal runout.

To save you the gory details there was a clear winner in our tests the DeWalt and that is the one that he designed his saddle mill around. These mills were produced in our shop, we built and sold about 20 of them and they went all over the world. When we stopped selling them because we did not want to be in that business favoring to do our repair work they were selling for around $4,500 each. We no longer produce them but receive inquiries every month or so usually from people who have no idea that this is a serious tool with a serious price tag....

Our mill and the ones we shipped had runout of around 0.001" and that was what we were looking to find AND deliver.

The DeWalts were upgraded with chucks from "Precise Bits" and we are the ones who turned the OLF onto who Precise Bits is and what they do.

Of all the lam trimmers that we bought, tested and returned the five that Link in California tested were by far the sloppiest out there. They averaged out of the box around 0.005" of runout which is way too sloppy for a saddle mill. To be more precise we measured runout at the tip of the bit that was doing the work. So our runout measurement is what the work piece will see meaning the resulting saddle slot. 0.005" slop in a saddle slot is unacceptable and enough of a gap that the saddle might rock and the gap could be seen with the human eye easily.

Now to level the playing field professional standards for how a saddle fits need to be defined and discussed here because YMMV is in play. A proper saddle should fill the slot in a gapless manner, not rock, no gaps, full, flat bottom contact with a flat bottom on the saddle and the bridge installed on the guitar. The ends of the saddle should have zero gaps as well and the curvature of the ends needs to be precise, eloquent and fit perfectly. That's how we make our saddles.

If there is a UST (under saddle transducer) the saddle needs to be capable of moving up and down with only finger force but never, never loose and capable of leaning. The saddle can fit more snugly if there is no UST.

So our standards were and remain very high for this function which must be considered when evaluating how one may get to this point.

Lastly the DeWalt also had a good history, big company behind it and it was well made in other respects too so we went with it and purchased over 20 of them and they never let us down. Our mills have been in the wild now for 10 years or so with zero failures or complaints about the DeWalt Lam trimmer we shipped installed in them.

With all this said do yourself a favor and join the professional luthiers who pretty much all universally agree that Dremel tools when it comes to precision are..... well they are just not all that....

Big Box store lam trimmers can be all over the map too in our experience and the most popular one we discovered was one of the worst for precision.



https://youtu.be/d3tmkLVEAQo?si=vc9_YMCkiL9UuD2s

Hesh, did Dave happen to test the Foredom tool with its handpiece? I want something small and manipulatable like the Dremel but without the runout.

Thanks for the help fellas. Lots of options.

A year ago, I ordered and installed one of those Precision collets for the Bosch Colt after reading about it here on OLF. Interestingly, Precision stated that the Bosch Colt was so bad, they wouldn't guarantee or accept returns of their collet for that router. The collet was a VERY good purchase none-the-less. If only the depth adjustment wasn't a POS.....