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Does anyone use a molding machine to radius their fretboards? I will be using ebony & some rosewoods!


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I've never used one for a fretboard but I've used them a lot over the years.

One thing I'd be concerned with is after the fret slots are cut a planer could possibly cause chip out.
I'd suggest you experiment before running an expensive piece of wood through.
My guess is that ebony may be more problematic than rosewood.

I saw a picture on the LMI site of someone running a fretboard through the same W&H molder that I have! Jimmy Foster "master luthier" would shape his jointer blades with a radius! I wouldn't trust that method, but Jimmy made 100s of incredible 7 string arch tops that way. Anyway, I'm going to give it a go on my W&H, after I grind some 12" radius knives .


May your sails be full & your glass never be empty!

Charlie Hoffman uses a planer with radius knives.

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Thanks Terrance , I'm just looking for a little insight before spending time on setup!


May your sails be full & your glass never be empty!

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Terence,
That's what I was looking for and he has lots of other information on his site! I just put together a vacuum, so I just have to grind a knife.


May your sails be full & your glass never be empty!

Could you just get custom knives cut for a moulder and just use that? Or do you think the wheels that hold down the material won't be sufficient? I could see snipe being an issue. Also would you cut the fret slots first then radius? You could also make a captive carriage and use double stick tape. Just spit balling here. I have wondered about this as well.

The W&H molder will not snipe! I plan on making a simple sled with 3/4" mdf and block around the precut fretboard blank to support the rollers at the beginning and end of the cut. I will use double sided tape, vacuum is a cool idea but not reasonable . I have made knives for this molder before, not to difficult, just time consuming.


May your sails be full & your glass never be empty!

Well make sure you post some results. I am really curious about this technique. Thanks!

David,

We have tried this and there is some snipe/chatter.....

We have six of the William and Hussey along with two of the Grizzly look alike-s. We have several radius knives for fret boards in various radii and we have tried carriage boards with tape, vacuum and several other techniques...... Problem is that the thickness of the material is 1/4"- 3/8" so there is some small amount of chatter even given a carriage board that is 10" longer on either side the material will move ever so slightly. ( we also have the second pass rollers on 4 of our machines..... and it really didn't matter ) Second the fret boards often come already with taper from India and the length offers little margin for error and we never wanted to take the time to make the boards all uniform in size width etc....... so making a carriage board for a moving size also is difficult. We found we could make the boards with the molder but the clean-up time was as great as if we just used the Grizzly swing style radius sander method. (about 3-4 minutes per board)

Probably personally wouldn't spend the effort..... ( sell you our knives if you decide to go this route)

My two cents.

Blessings,

Kevin

That stinks! I will take your word for it since you've done the experimenting!
Anyway awesome machine for custom molding!!


May your sails be full & your glass never be empty!

So why use moulding machines to radius fretboards rather than sanding machines, or for hobbyists, a radius block and lots of elbow grease?

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