Instrument Building

Students Ron and Lamar ream their bridge pins to fit, slot the nut and give their guitars a final setup, before stringing them up and playing them for the first time!

Making a Guitar Mold – Video Tutorial

I’ve attached a thin maple strip to the edge of my ebony binding strips and now I’m cutting the binding channels, and addressing the miters between the florentine cutaway tip and the end seam.

I show how I use specialty joining boards to glue purfling strips to the edge of binding strips in order to create side purfling.

I resaw, dimension and slot a fretboard out of a waste piece of Ziricote for Guitar #56

Ramon visits the shop to work on a cool radial rosette design with black limba, burl, and fiber strips. We’re using the Radial Rosette Maker Jig available here: https://www.ericschaeferguitars.com/the-radial-rosette-maker-kit/

I’m using Zebrawood for the fingerboard on Guitar #57. I dimension out a rough fretboard blank, cut the fret slots and shape the board.

Q&A – Pickguards, Rosettes, and $20k Guitars

I install wood bindings on a florentine cutaway guitar.

I cut a channel with a gramil and a chisel and bind the tip of the florentine style cutaway with flamed maple strips on guitar #57

I build a simple jig for cleaning up and planing binding and purfling strips down to their intended dimensions, using scrap wood, an old handplane blade, a threaded rod, and a dowel.

I rout out the binding ledge for curly maple binding strips using a binding tower system, and I talk about the importance of minding grain direction among other things.