Official Luthiers Forum!

I have a Mini Mill that I've had for years and it's mostly in the way but today I cut a saddle slot and drilled the bridge pin holes and it was heaven. Then I used it touch up some fret markers that there was no other way I could have done it. Really nice tool to have around and was wondering if anyone else has one and what they might use it for.

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Thank You and Best To All

I think most of the people using mills to build guitars are likely running CNC, although I've known a few who operate them manually for precision repair work and even fabricating bridges. A nice mill is on my short list of machines I would like to own, more likely than not I will get a used one through an industrial surplus shop and retrofit it to full CNC. Come to think of it, there are a few factories I've been through that were using CNC mills because they got a good deal and they can work every bit as well on wood.

most CNC machines are router tables. Yes I use a Mill. CNC table uses a router. A mill will not work well as a cnc machine as you can only get 3 axis capability and to make necks you need more Axis capability and the router table does that for you. They are larger and can be much more useful in guitar making.
I used bridgeport EZ trac and Laguna Mills when I worked as a machinist.
You can get a good small CNC table for about the same as a used Mill .

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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

I have used Bridgeports for repairing and modifying guitars, and also for fabricating parts and hardware.
Wish I had one out in the garage....

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Not for guitars, but for ukes. The mill is useful for many tasks.

Cutting accurate saddle slots...



...and channels for CF rods.



With a high speed spindle bolted to the mill head and a rotary table on the bed, the mill makes it easy to make perfectly round rosettes..



...and channels to put them in.



Holes for side dots can be drilled with precision.



Surfaces can be machined flat...



...and sanded perpendicular to other surfaces.



Not to mention lots of other tasks.

As a machinist mills and lathes are my go to tools. They make guitar building easy as well. Ive used a mill for jointing, saddle slotting, drilling tuner holes, bridge pin holes, barrel nut holes, etc. the most useful set up I've found is to clamp up the neck blank after attaching the head plate. I then true the fretboard gluing surface, square the head plate end to the neck, and cut the truss rod slot, all in about 5 minutes. It's the quickest and best way ive found to do this. Leaves a perfectly dead flat surface for gluing the fretboard, a perfectly square head plate for a perfect nut seat and you knock out the truss rid slot too.

I have a CNC gantry that currently uses a variable speed router which will eventually be upgraded to use a proper spindle. For the record, most CNC systems are not router tables. There is also nothing particularly challenging about fabricating necks on a 3-axis machine, both 4 and 5 axis machines are not particularly common in the world of guitar manufacturing even for the big companies. Generally speaking, guitar companies have enough humans handling parts and operating machines that it is much more economical to have two 3-axis machines using different fixtures to complete a given operation that could be accomplished with a single 5-axis machine.

There is absolutely nothing uncommon about 5-axis mills. If you search around online you will find that CNC retrofitting of mills is actually quite common. Given that I have designed and built a CNC router that is accurate to within ±0.0005" it is an appealing concept to do so. In my case, there will be no need to shape necks or other wood parts with it, but in order to create precision metal parts the additional rigidity afforded by using a mill is a necessity.

I've got the cheapest Mini Mill made and it works great for simple things like cutting the saddle slot and drilling a peg head accurately. I even cut some Alabam into 3/32" strips today for a fret board inlay using the mill and a 1/16" drill bit from Stew Mac. I'm sure that a much more capable and much more expensive machine will do much, much more but I don't intend to do any CNC but I can't wait to find many more uses for this little rascal.

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Thank You and Best To All

One of the next tools I bring into the shop will either be a Smithy, or at least a mill of some kind. Grizzly used to make a woodworking knee mill....just like a regular mill but with a high speed spindle. I think they stopped making that. That's the only problem with using a mill for woodworking. The spindle speeds typically way below the ideal woodworking speeds. I do seriously miss having access to a mill and a lathe since I quit my day job.

I would be lost without the vertical mill and have used it extensively for making small parts as well as tooling for guitars. The tooling includes aluminum fixtures for the CNC router as well as check gauges and templates. While true that many procedures done on a vertical mill could also be done on CNC, it's hard to beat the rigidity and versatility of the mill. With that said, I feel that the most important feature of any machine for luthiery is not horsepower, not spindle speed, not feedrates, not positioning accuracy,not ease of use etc.... but rather geometric accuracy. If the machine has good accuracy of, say, .001" per foot alignment of all three axes to each other, then it can produce good tools and instrument parts.

I've done a lot of wood work on a standard mill but have pretty much reached the point that the only thing I use it for anymore, in guitar making, is bridges. Takes longer to set up than it's worth and I've learned to do the other jobs accurately on my woodworking tools. So my big mill is for sale and I'll use the Sherline for bridges and other small parts. Doesn't mean they aren't useful, only that I'm not using mine much anymore; everyone has their own methods.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I will probably do just as you Steve, save the mill for bridge work and for the occasional task that can't be done through conventional drill presses etc. For example I got myself into a design bind the other day (one of many, whew) on some fret markers. Had a great idea that turned out very hard to implement but the mill came to the rescue and was a perfect tool for the job. And back to bridges it's just so easy to route and drill pins at the perfect spacing and angles I;ll use the mill every time.

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Thank You and Best To All

Yep, I love a mill for bridges - makes them a snap.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"