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I have a beautiful piece of Macassar ebony I am resawing (for fretboards and bridges), and am trying to get the very most of of it. So I would like to ask what your maximum dimensions are for a couple of things, for electric and steel string guitars, no basses or anything else. The more data points the better, so I can get an idea of the smallest I can cut these pieces.
-Nut width
-Saddle width
-fretboard thickness (finished)
-bridge width (the smaller dimension of the two, eg. 1.5")

Thanks!

Hi Ed,

Fbs ... electrics - 2.25 widest, 1 11/16 nut, 1/4 thick, you can go to 3/16 though
acoustcis .. 2.35 - 2.4 wide, 1/3/4 to 1 7/8 nut, same on thickness, I prefer 1/4.

bridges - belly style, 6 to 7 inches long, 1.5 deep, 0.4 thick
rectangular style - 6-6.5 long, 1 - 1.25 deep, 0.4 thick

my advice on resawing stuff is to make things thicker and be on the safe side of useful. No sense cutting the board and finding out you have 4 useless pieces instead of 3 good ones.

_________________
Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

Hi Ed, When resawing i always add 1/16" more material than i'm going to use to get the saw marks out with final sanding. So my steel string bridges and fretboards are 5/16" thick to start after resawing. I generally make my fretboards 1/8" wider than what the finished product will be. That give me a little to play with leveling the dot markers and frets along with the board.

Yeah, generally I resaw a good amount larger than what I need, but this stuff was expensive so I really wanna get the most out of it I can. The board is just wide enough so that if I actually resaw the fretboards already with a taper, I can get a matching bridge blank for every fretboard off the tapered end.

Thanks guys.

Just wondering what you are going with on the headplate when useing coco for the bridge and fretboard?

All done. Did not have to taper the fretboards afterall, but they are just big enough, as well as the bridges. Total of 7 Fretboards, 6 bridges, 5 headplates, 5 end grafts, 20+ pieces of binding and a chunk to make tuner buttons out of. The only waste out of this board is in the bottom of the DC.

I was planning on getting a lenox carbide blade for resawing back and sides, but my tuff tooth little ripper bi-metal blade did such a nice job, even when resawing the full width at 1/8" for headplates, that I am tempted not to.



Mark, not sure why you mentioned coco?

Sorry, my mistake. I thought you were resawing coco. I see you are useing the same wood for headplates, that's cool.