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The Antes plans do not have all the necessary dimensions for the neck marked on the plan. So you have to scale them. When I went to do so, I first checked it with a Stew Mac fret cutting template using the Martin 24.34" scale against the fretboard on the drawing. The two did not agree.

What you will find below is what followed my mistaken belief that the Antes plan was based on Martin's OM guitar. As far as the scale goes, it is not. Antes uses a 24.4" scale. Martin uses a 24.34" scale (at least according to Dan Erlewine).

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Julie Moriarty
http://JulimorCreations.com

I have used both the Parlor and Dred plans from LMI but I didn’t used them as templates for anything. I bought the acrylic templates for each and the molds for each.

I think the most common complaint about the Antes plans is they are over braced maybe? I use the plans for locating the braces but the actual brace height and thickness I do my own thing.

What part of the plan were you planning on using for a template?


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Never mind, I re-read your post. For the fretboard I would just take the nut width and width at the 12th and draw out your own template. It will also be useful because you can go ahead and draw out the string paths and get a visual how it will all look maybe?

Not sure what to do about the neck though.




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I'm going to have to draw it up in CAD. I've done that for my other guitars but I got lazy and bought the plans for the OM. It just makes me mad that such an important part of the guitar build - the neck - isn't accurately scaled. That makes the plans they sell worthless.

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Julie Moriarty
http://JulimorCreations.com

I also have plans by Kinkead and the scale is off on that plan, too. Who can you trust?

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Julie Moriarty
http://JulimorCreations.com

I wouldn't rely on a fret scale from any plan, too critical. Kinkead plans actually tell you not to use it from the plan, and to use the quoted measurements.
Apart from potential problems with inaccurate scaling, paper shrinks and expands with humidity.
They're normally reasonable for body shapes, but even then I've seen them being different to quoted measurements on the same plans.

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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.

Don't forget that paper expands and contracts with humidity just like wood.

The plans should give you a general idea, but you need to take the important things on yourself.

What you can trust is the numbers given on the plans, or any fretboard template that LMI sells, or the stewmac fret calculator, or many of the other myriad fret calculators.

What you can't expect to trust is for a malleable piece of paper to be accurate to the tolerances required for fretboard layout.

I wouldn't trust any blueprint from anyone anywhere for that.

You got there first, Colin!

It's not the expansion or contraction of the paper that throws them off it's that they never were drawn accurately. They should have left them out entirely and just given the fret spacing chart. To the casual observer or novice they look reasonable. A "plan" is not supposed to be just a pretty drawing.

The McRostie plans from StewMac are much better than the Antes plans. The John Mayes drawing is also better for the bracing pattern.

The scale you can either calculate mathematically or LMI does have scale sheets printed out. Scale dimensions are pretty easy to find. I would never trust a drawing where the lines are 1 1/6" wide to give me an accurate dimension. Having seen thousands of blueprints I know for a fact that people will also change dimensions and throw them on the same print. Both by hand and in a cad cam program.

Agree totally.

Before I griped here, I checked the plans I drew up against the Stew Mac 25.5 template I have that I've used for Fender style guitars. My plans matched the SM template perfectly and those plans are over 5 years old. Paper expands and shrinks but not enough to compensate for the discrepancies in the Antes and Kinkead plans.

Before I retired I drew up construction ready drawings and even at such a large scale, I can't imaging ever being so careless that I'd have to write, "Do not scale off these drawings", on the plans. That would have been the last drawing I ever did.

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Julie Moriarty
http://JulimorCreations.com

IIRC, a special printing process must be done for blueprints to ensure they are at scale...

effects of humidity, seriously????

anyway, I've seen this before and the cause was rooted in an incorrect printing process and if IIRC this was a problem when the OLF introduced plans years ago.

and yeah, when purchasing plans I expect them to be to true scale, otherwise why bother spending the $ when you can get just as close scaling off an image on the net.

Have you contacted LMI?
Flaming them on a forum before they have a chance to address your concerns would be considered to be in poor taste.

Many of you are making an assumption that blue prints are drawn to scale. NO THEY ARE NOT !. I was a machinist and worked with blue prints most of my life. The only time you will have a true blue print to scale it will tell you that. Full scale may be to scale but they are a representational view. What you do have is numbers. They are what you use.
Another note is that often prints are ( COPIED ) not printed so that reduces accuracy.
Just because you expect them to be true scale doesn't make it so , so learn to trust the plans only by the numbers not by the copy . You don' t know what you don't know till you know it. Assuming something is the worse you can do.

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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

Jules/Julie

I recently retired after fifty years as an engineer. I worked a fabrication environment where machinists and welders and fabricators built the things that I designed. For many years my drawings were made with a pencil and t-square and an "engineer's scale" little three sided ruler thingie. My drawings always had a scale factor in the title block (1:1, 1/4" = 1', 1" = 1 mile). I always gave critical measurements on the drawing from one point to another. If important my drawings always had a tolerance noted.

The machinists knew, as every machinist knows, to never measure my drawing - it might be close but it was drawn by a human with a pencil and a little wooden ruler thingie. But they knew that the dimensions indicated on the drawing were, as they say, dead nuts on. Build the widget to that measurement (and a good machinist with a good micrometer could do that) and it would fit whatever it was supposed to fit.

We got CADD and solid modeling and parametric design programs for our little computers and my drawings got a lot prettier, but the machinists still knew that they were to use the dimensions on the drawings, not to try to scale them. Machinists got replaced by computer numeric control machines (actually they would stand by them with a cup of coffee and "run" the mill) - it was still the dimensions from my drawings the made the mill make the widget.

Rule number one, you never scale a drawing if dimension are given

I just finished building an OM guitar from the Antes plans. Yes, I altered the braces a bit based on my experience and the wood I picked, but otherwise the guitar is very nice and I'm quite happy with it

viewtopic.php?f=10101&t=50478

I was a tad surprised when I read your thread title because my guitar is so nice, so I thought I would check. You seem to be most upset by the fretboard layout on the left side of the drawing. I got my fine $20 digital calipers out (they must be accurate, eh, they are digital and read to three decimal places). I checked a piece of new 3/8 drill rod that I happened to have in my shop - it measures 0.369 to 0.370 inches - hey, isn't that supposed to be 0.375? Thats 1/6 percent off - probably better than my old "engineer's scale" but sure seems like a lot.

Well anyway, lets compare the drawing. I measured from the nut line to the first fret line three times and got 1.420. 1.426, 1.428. The fret spacing chart on the upper right corner of the drawing gives the measurement as 1.4256". StewMac's fret position calculator for a 25.400 scale guitar gives it as 1.426.

So, Jules/Julie - maybe it isn't so bad after all. For certain the fret spacing chart agrees with the SM version well within the order of magnitude (remember these are calculated from the 12th root of 2) - the Antes are four decimal places, SM are three, you should always round off the last. While I would never do it, I think you could scale the fretboard on the Antes plan, lay out your frets (and the scale length) and have a guitar that plays as well in tune as the old 12th root of 2 ever will.

Mine does

"Well anyway, lets compare the drawing. I measured from the nut line to the first fret line three times and got 1.420. 1.426, 1.428. The fret spacing chart on the upper right corner of the drawing gives the measurement as 1.4256". StewMac's fret position calculator for a 25.400 scale guitar gives it as 1.426."

It's been several years since I've used the OM plan so I'm not sure if I'm remembering right, but it seems like one of his plans had the first several frets spaced reasonably accurately and the frets closer to the body pretty far off. So if you measured the first few and assumed they were all accurate you were in for a rude awakening down the road.
But as others have said - don't trust a drawing, do the math or use a reliable fret scale calculator (Stew Mac has a free one on their website).

I only measured the first one - when I built mine I used the SM calculator. However at fret 20 the Antes plans still agree with the SM calculator (17.3995 vs 17.400 from the nut). I do applaud the Antes plans for giving all their measurement from the nut (what Jules's cadd program would call "base line dimensioning"), you certainly do not want to add all the errors of each fret to fret measurement (the calculations plus your layout).

The WFRET software available in the Musical Instrument Makers Forum's Library pages runs on Windows PCs and will print a paper template for use in making a fretboard. The boss keeps one elderly Windows 7 machine running to handles these sorts of chores, but the software runs on the more recent versions of Windows, including Windows 8 My Homework and Windows X - The Revenge of Gates (I am a huge Windows fan - really). We find these templates handy for addressing fretboard replacements on those instruments with uncommon scale lengths, as most printers are able to scale up or down a bit to address printer deviation, so a 3 or 4 percent adjustment to scale is a few key strokes away. We typically print and assemble the paper template, measure to the 12th and the last fret, find any correction needed, then reprint and either cut the board or make up an aluminum template from the paper master if we are doing more than one fretboard to that scale.

There are a number of threads on the Antes plans in the archives. It might be worth reviewing those, particularly when considering how closely to confirm to the plan when bracing. There are also a number of discussions here and on UMGF re: bracing configuration, and some of the most useful have measurements of vintage Martin instruments by Mr. John Arnold.

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That's exactly what I found. Which means only one thing, the plan was not drawn correctly.

I worked with construction drawings for over 35 years and every one was drawn accurately to scale. Everyone expected and even demanded that. Maybe in the guitar building world the expectations are not the same but I can only attribute that to those who create the drawings in the first place. If they are not accurate it's because the drafter chose not to take the time to make it so.

And it takes a lot of time.

It probably takes me a week or more to complete a guitar drawing. I worked for a couple of hours on an OM drawing that I downloaded yesterday and haven't even touched on all the work that needs to be done. Maybe that's just me. When I had blueprints in my hand I expected them to be accurately drawn. And when I was doing the drawing, I made sure the person holding them in their hands could easily follow them to build exactly what was intended.

So when I buy drawings or plans I expect them to be correct. If they are not correct, it should be noted to the prospective buyer. LMI says Scott Antes is "a mechanical engineer by training, with a long history of instrument building, his experience and expertise are well illustrated in these fine plans." If he produced construction drawings like his OM plan, he'd be looking for another job.

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Julie Moriarty
http://JulimorCreations.com

After I'm done with a guitar drawing, all I do is tell the printer not to alter the scale. I always include a 1" by 1" square box on the plan to reference after it comes out of the plotter. I tell the printer to check that box to make sure it's scaled accurately. And when I pick them up, I check it, too. That's pretty much it.

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Julie Moriarty
http://JulimorCreations.com

there is unfortunately a lot of misinformation here. Plans and blueprints are not the same thing. On a blue print there is a box on the lower right. In there is the information you need to know to manufacture the piece intended. A construction plan may be to scale but not to the accuracy of what a guitar plan. When you are building a house you may see a scale of 1 in to a foot. This doesn't mean full scale but a guidle line . The tolerance may be what ever the architect intended but certainly not to a tolerance of thousandths. In this box you will see things like size of the print. This may vary from one office to another but it may be a letter such as A B C this designates the size of the paper as an example 18 in by 30 in and how many pages involved. Info as to who drew it the date and revision of the print is also there. Scale size material etc.
As an engineer when drawings are made we would send a field sketch or drawing to the draftsman. He would draw what was intended with a scale dictated by the engineer or draftsman. Assuming prints are true scale is unfair but you have to understand the representation of the print is what contains the information.
The printing process for blue prints is not a copier. Today we no longer use the bluing process as much as in the old day but use plotters . These are high tolerance printers that use pens and it is how the paper is held and what size pen to use. The lines may vary in width on a drawing , that helps to control accuracy. Use and rely on the numbers shown not the picture. Note this information and you will be more accurate. Also note where the datum points are. There is always or should be a point that shows 0 0 or home. A 3 d print would have to be done on more than one sheet for accuracy as the plans that represent X Y and Z will show left to right . back to front and up and down.
I hope this helps to clarify what a print is and the difference of a drawing and a scale print. The attached article will be very helpful

http://www.vista-industrial.com/blog/ho ... g-drawing/
getting into measuring tools is another subject . A $10 caliper can't be expected to be accurate ad a $250 Mitutoyo caliper or Brown and Sharpe.

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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

freemans post is good
And one thing was the referrence to construction plans when you look at the process each company may have its own interpretation of the process of drawing prints. You are not relying to a copied print from an outside source
Hope that this information can help understand the misunderstanding of how and what prints are. What I used as a machinist and toolmaker are different that prints that are produced to guitar.
I am sure there are guys here that build planes and the plans there were scale as you would build on top of them so lets say that it depends on what the plan is for on how accurate the print may be.

_________________
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

Using torrified paper might be of help also.



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Pat

Here is a neck from an old project guitar. The fretboard was purchased from a source that sells parts off of the Martin assembly line, I have every reason to believe that it is a genuine Martin 25.4 inch scale fretboard. Unfortunately I broke it at the 14th fret while fretting it.

I took my copy of the Antes plans as received from LMII, folded them down the center line of the fretboard and taped it to the Martin fretboard with clear tape. I tried to line the edge of the nut with the end of the fretboard. Here is how the first few frets line up



And the frets up to 14



I'm sorry I can't check anything beyond 15 and I certainly wouldn't recommend this as a way to lay out your fretboard, it looks to me to be about as accurate as a Martin fretboard.....

I learned to build without using plans, after 100 guitar builds I have never used a plan. I do use body templates for the shape. Happy building.

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