Official Luthiers Forum!

Your donut looks great Hesh.
I made the contact lip on mine only 1/8" & it's pretty scary... If you drop off an edge, the router bit can touch the sides. Also it is small enough to do compression damage to a soft top. I'll copy yours before I use the rig again!
Thanks for posting the pic.

Arrrgh!

Daniel my friend my donut was made by Don Williams one of the creators of this jig so I can't take any credit - or blame...... Seriously my jig is beautifully made and I had Don sign mine. I have a bit of a collection of tools and jigs that came from OLFers and I always ask folks to sign stuff for me. These are some of my very most prized things.

_________________
Ann Arbor Guitars

I don't know if it helps or hurts anyone who might use the technique, but I made the paralellagram out of heavy duty door hinges. 3" wide. There is a tiny bit of 'play' to them but not enough to mess things up. It sure simplified making that thing.
For what it's worth, I don't clamp the daylights out of things, I just set the instrument in the radius dish with a rubber no-slip pad betweent it and the guitar. I do prop up the instrument on the heel end to acccount for the taper when doing that end of the guitar.

I continually see people having problems with the Williams binding jig. I have used all of the types out there and Don's design is, by far, the easiest of all to use. As a matter of fact, I have all of my guitar building students cut their binding and purflings cuts blindfolded. Never had one make a mistake. Probably this is so because of a simple modification I made to Don's donut. The way it was originally designed was to leave a "washer" on the donut and this is what rides on the top. The basic problem with that design is, if it slips, the router has the very distinct probability of dropping straight down and gouging a hole in the side. I wanted the router to actually fall away from the guitar and do no damage if I or one of my students slipped. Therefore, I modified the donut by removing the elongated washer, leaving a 1/4" flat ledge which then tapers away from the bit. With that adjustment you can cut the slots blindfolded as the router cannot engage the body in any way if there is a problem. I am attaching a photo of a donut made with this modification. I urger you to make the same on yours. It appears from Hesh's photo that all he needs to do is to sand away the "washer" leaving the flat to ride the top.

_________________
Sylvan
http://www.wellsguitars.com

Sylvan,
That is brilliant!
Per your urging, I will do the same with mine as I did a REALLY wide purfling recently and when I routed the binding, I did slip off the washer. Its a good thing I know how to fix that sort of screw up.
I can't wait for that to never happen again!

Dave