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Just thought you`d like to see how I made the bridge pins for my first steel string build. I bought a collet chuck for my mini wood lathe specially for making brige pins. Although the pins were hand turned, I will be making a profile scraper later to turn just the pin heads so I can have that little tiny bead just under the head. To do this by hand I just find too difficult, my eyes aint what they used to be anyway.

Here`s the first photo showing some Ebony being rounded to 11mm diameter. The collet I`ll be using in the collet chuck will be a 11mm to 10mm holding capacity.



Here the Ebony is mounted in the collet chuck with the excess extending into the hollow drive spindle. I turned the 3 degree taper at this stage and part it off.



I tested the taper using part of the StewMac slotting jig tool. I wanted the taper of all the pins to lock into this part at the same place so when I come to slot the pins they would all be consistant.



To turn the heads I made a wooden chuck for the collet chuck. This was drilled out using the tailstock and then reamed out by hand with a 3 degree pin reamer to allow the part turned pins to be jam fitted for turning the heads. I was going to drill the heads for gluing an 1/8" plastic dot, but the chuck ran very slightly off centre so I aborted this idea. I shall make a more accurate chuck next time using some nylon material and reaming it out with the reamer held in the tailstock.



Here are the pins getting thier slots cut.



And finally the finished pins.

Thanks for the post Bob. Must be a labor of love . Bridge pins are one of
the few things along with fretwire and tuning machines that I can safely say I
will never make. Those look really nice.

Very interesting Bob. They look
real nice!   Thanks

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Anderson Guitars
Clearwater,Fl. 33755

Thanks for taking the time to show this process.

They do look great!

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Thanks,
Blain

http://www.ullrichguitar.com

"89.67% of all statistics are made up on the spot."

Why slot them? They work better without slots.

[QUOTE=BarryDaniels]Why slot them? They work better without slots.[/QUOTE]

Agreed - Perhaps Bob is making these pins for guitars that are not set-up for, nor will they be set-up for, slotless pins?

And very nice tutorial Bob - thanks for putting this together for us.

Very nice,
I realy want to turn my own pins out of interesting woods like snakewood
etc and also some ivory i have.
this has given me the impudus i need to take the plunge,
Thnaks bob,

Joel.