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Good morning fellow sawdust makers / wood tappers.

I’m looking into manual fret slotting jigs. There are a few
Out there from the big companies, but I wanted to see if the experienced users in the group had a favorite and why?

Thank you for any input
Have a great day!
B Snow


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By manual do you mean by a hand saw? i.e. no motorized tools.

Brian R

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Brian R, Wood Mechanic
N8ZED

I’m not opposed to a small table saw system. I really just don’t
Know a lot about it .



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I think a manual saw system makes sense for me provided the small number of builds I do a year

BUT I want to buy once / cry once


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If you have an extra $1200 laying around

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3ruwZdaPjbs

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My memory is so good, sometimes I remember things that never happened.

If you decide on this one, I have a older version that is collecting dust: https://www.lmii.com/fretting-tools/270 ... ystem.html

Will let it go for a good price.

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BTW.... the title is painful sounding.

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Haha I just busted out laughing at the office ha
Yes... yes it is painful


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I use the LMI power slotting system. It's never let me down. I prefer it to the stewmac blade with the built in stiffener as you can cheaply replace the blade and use the same stiffeners, as well as using the stiffeners with other blades like the diablo when cutting bindings. I also use the same .025 blade for cutting purfling and bindings with a zero clearance insert. Just with an inexpensive dewalt saw.

Having a tablesaw in the shop can be handy for a lot of things...

Same here. I got the fret template and blade from LMI and love it. I put it in a Dewalt portable table saw I had upgraded from. Use it only for my once a year fret slotting. Accurate and takes about 1 minute.

I’ll look into this. Does it work with a regular table saw?


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"BUT I want to buy once / cry once "

I used to draw the lines on the fretboard, clamp a small block of wood on the line to guide the saw and cut slots with a back saw. It is the cheapest way to do it, and probably as fast and easy as using most of the jigs out there.
Eventually I made a small table saw, which for the limited adjustments needed for cutting frets is not hard to do.

I believe so. I just measured the arbor size on mine and checked what LMI spec’d and was good. I don’t remember the measurements.

I have used the LMI templates and blade/stiffners for 14 years with a sled design from Sylvan Wells’ website. Works great.

One warning, the blade is thin and depending on the thread width on your arbor, can drop into a thread groove and get a little eccentric. On my old DeWalt portable saw that happened and the hole in the blade actually deformed a little. Still worked OK although a test cut was critical for depth.

On my Delta saw narrower threads and all was OK.

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