Official Luthiers Forum!

I'm sure I'm not the first one to come up with this design. When I went searching for a jig to help me bind fingerboards more quickly, I found a lot of designs but they all required clamping or adjusting for the specific fingerboard width. I wanted something very simple to use. Here is what I came up with. For most common fingerboard profiles, not adjustment is necessary. If you want to do both steel string and classical, you might need to drill two pin holes in the base so you can move the rotating straitedge a little further out to accommodate the wider fingerboard. Other than that, set it on your bench, line it with wax paper, slide your fingerboard and bindings in, and glue them up. As you slide the fingerboard in, the straightedge on the pin rotates to match angle on the fingerboard and forms a V for everything to slide up into nice and snug with no adjustments necessary. I think the pics are pretty self explanatory about how I built it but happy to answer and questions. The only critical measurement is the distance between the stationary edge and the one that rotates. It should be roughly the same as the middle of the fretboard with the binding on it + a smidgen, larger than the top of the fret board and smaller then the back.

Thanks,
Carl.

Great idea! Put wax paper down and you can CA the bindings on.

_________________
My Facebook Guitar Page

"There's really no wrong way, as long as the results are what's desired." Charles Fox

"We have to constantly remind ourselves what we're doing....No Luthier is putting a man on the moon!" Harry Fleishman

"Generosity is always different in the eye of the person who didn't receive anything, but who wanted some." Waddy Thomson

Nice! It's like a classic old world solution. You could even just do it right on top the bench.

New username, same Pat Mac

_________________
Pat

Made one like it 10 years ago, good ideas never go out of style.

_________________
Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Nice!

Slick! Going to have to do that myself.

_________________
Tony Thatcher
Bozeman, Montana

Or packing tape.

Great idea, I use kind of a similar jig where the movable piece just slides and you add clamps every couple of inches to assure even pressure, especially at the ends. I am going to try your concept.

It looks brand new in the picture, have you used it a bunch of times by now? Any issues with uneven pressures?

_________________
It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Awesome!
Sometimes simple solutions are the best.
Thanks for sharing.

_________________
wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

Looks brand new because it is. The fretboard you see in the pic will be the first one. I was concerned about the even pressure as well. That is why I used the 1.5" wide strip of hard wood for the rotating straight edge, to get it as stiff as possible. I even considered getting a piece of flat iron to use but decided that was overkill. I have set every thing up in it a few times and can not see any evidence of uneven pressure and no deflection in the rotating straight edge. I still need to do a few things to the body before I can get final measurements for the fretboard so I have not bound it yet but will this weekend.

Finally got around to using this jig. Worked great, no problem with uneven pressure. Gotta make sure you get the fretboard and binding are in tight, but once you do it works like dream.

wax paper

_________________
My Facebook Guitar Page

"There's really no wrong way, as long as the results are what's desired." Charles Fox

"We have to constantly remind ourselves what we're doing....No Luthier is putting a man on the moon!" Harry Fleishman

"Generosity is always different in the eye of the person who didn't receive anything, but who wanted some." Waddy Thomson

So did you just tap the fingerboard and binding into the jig to tighten up?

Yep. That is exactly what I did.

very similar to what i use for joining my tops... got it from one of Robbie O'Brien's video d'jour flicks. Very nice use. i'll have to see if i can make an adjustable one so i can use the same jig for tops and fingerboards.

Should be as simple as using a wider bottom platform with another hole for the metal pin where you need it for joining the tops/backs.

Thanks for this! Just did my first glue-up with it and I love it.

I put a piece of tape under the fingerboard so the bindings would sit just proud of the bottom when everything is seated down. Just a quick scrape and they're level to the board.