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I bought Stew Mac's saddle slotting jig, and mostly I've been happy with it. But the ends of the saddle slot are always a little dicey. Dan Erlewine's video shows him angling the dremel and bringing it down into the slot, that and shallow passes seems to work well for me, however his example video is a through saddle, so he's not dealing with the ends of the slot. Whenever I get to the end of the slot the bit in my dremel likes to jump around and I end up with a chewed up saddle slot. Any tips?

Maybe switch to a laminate trimmer.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Use a laminate trimmer. The extra power lets you do it in a single pass, and there's less likelihood of runout/wobbliness in the setup. Dremel are handy but not that powerful.

I also use a downcut spiral bit. Angle it to go in, and angle it to go out while still at full speed. Sometimes the chatter can come from the bit grabbing in the slot as it slows down...

I generally take several passes even with a laminate trimmer. The router is strong enough to do it, but the bits I use are not. I make the saddle slots fairly deep so two or three passes saves on bits.
One thing I do which - might - help is to stop a hair short on the first couple of passes and do the last little bit of the end in one pass, back the router off a little and turn off the router while it is still held firmly down in the slot. If you have a foot switch (I don't) to cut the power that could also help.

That's where a plunge base helps. I wish my Ridgid had one.

So I understand, my dremel is likely underpowered for the job? And because of the lack of power when the bit bumps into the end of the saddle slot where it suddenly meets a lot more material it chatters rather than remove material cleanly the way a trim router would.

Laminate trimmer, plunge base, fresh downward spiral bits, 1/8” depth of cut at a time, and a jig with no slop in any direction. No issues at all.

This^^^^^

I just posted this in the tilted saddle slot thread http://luthiersforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10101&t=52640, but here is my prototype jig with a compact router.

Drill two holes, then route the slot between them.

Oh course a Laminate trimmer is a better solution but until then sometimes you can shim the bearings with pieces of paper on Dremels and tighten up the excessive run-out. That's what I did and it improved things a great deal.

Shallow passes are also advised when using a Dremel.

One of the reasons why Dave Collins spent ten years developing his saddle jig is that none of the solutions out there including DYI stuff worked very well.

If you upgrade to a lam trimmer we tested them all and they are not.... all.... alike. We found excessive run-out in some and never really found one as good as the PC-310 RIP.... But the Dewalt was the closest in terms of a design that works well for a saddle mill and had low run-out out of the box.

drilling is almost impossible to mate to your problem is the dremel and if your taking this in one pass. The dremel doesn't have the power to do that. Take multiple passes. I modified mine to use the inlay tool , you will find smaller controlled cuts will work much better.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

If you are using a dark wood another solution might be to cut a through saddle slot and either use a glued in through saddle or add back the wood missing on the ends to close the slot.
Alternatively, you could cut the slot a little long, put a-waxed- saddle in place and fill in the little "burbles" the router made on the ends with sawdust and glue. This is more of a repair technique, but on ebony and other dark woods can make an inconspicuous fix.

Thanks for the vid, Aaron!
I recently got a plunge base for my colt.
All the difference.
I'll make a similar jig soon.
Ain't tilting the saddle though!
I just think it's silly.
Alan

The pin router reigns supreme…




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

DIY stuff can work well too.
Laminate trimmer with plunge base is better than a Dremel, and depends on how the jig is made as well.
This one is fabricated in 6mm x 50mm aluminium plate
Weight helps stability, and even using this I take light cuts, about a millimetre at a time.

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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.

My friend upgraded the jig, with two rails, and stops, which I may get to some day.

Rick shared the story of the tilt back saddle in a private group, and I got his ok to add his name to it. Now I call it a feature, but more to give credit to the guy who thought of it (like the Laskin bevel).

May not make a whole lot of sense for “normal” builds, but most of mine get UST’s installed. Even Fishman has a .pdf on this; no credit to Rick of course.

Here's A video of Dave Collins using one of our Collin's Saddle Mills. If you hang in long enough you can see me irritating everyone with my playing.

One of the many features of the saddle mill is that you can use it on the instrument with zero damage, it's vacuum clamped to the guitar top.

https://youtu.be/LgpkXIdWhLg

There is absolutely nothing as nice as a Collins Saddle Mill. Mr. Frank Ford has an article on making a much more limited saddle mill on his Frets.com site, and if I recall, there are other, similar tools built up using some linear motion rails and an optical mount for the vertical axis.

In our shop, we have a home-brew version of the Ford jig, but with far less aluminum. The good part about this jig is that it can be fabricated in a wood shop using table saw, drill press, sheet phenolic stock from Woodcraft, and what is mostly common hardware. The bad part is that it is definitely NOT a Collins Saddle Mill!

Despite that shortcoming, it IS rock-steady and makes short work of the job...just not nearly as adjustable and easy-to-use as the Collins. If we were doing one today, I suspect we would use the DeWalt as the basis, rather than the Ridgid compact router, and add a pivoting 1/4" phenolic base. As it stands now, we have to remove the plywood sub-base and mount that 1/4" phenolic base plate to do anything on the guitar itself.

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For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan