It is hard to build an acoustic guitar without some way of routing perfect circles for the sound hole and the decorative rosette that surrounds the sound hole. Unfortunately, unless you are making circles all the time, spending the bucks on a commercial jig is hard to swallow.
I already had the Dremel from earlier projects and the Dremel plunge routing base from doing the inlays on the Les Paul. So all I needed to do is come up with a way of making an adjustable jig for routing circles.
Here’s what I came up with.
A pin in the bottom of the block sitting between the rails is the axis of rotation. Turn the screw counter-clockwise and you get a smaller circle, clockwise and you get a bigger one. Total cost, free!
To test it out I experimented with inlaying my abalone rosette into a piece of scrap wood.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvihSdEQyzE]
A little bit of sanding on the abalone pieces to fine tune the fit and they should work perfectly.
7 Comments
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Neat. You should have gotten a BS in Engineering i/o communications.
Interesting you use both metric and English measurements, i.e. 120mm and 1 15/16″! Is there a reason?
P.
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Author
Thanks. Regarding the mix and match measurements…sometimes you have to work with what is given to you. The abalone rosette was built with a 120 mm inside diameter and a 5 mm width. While the standard sound hole for this type of guitar has a 1 15/16″ radius. I’d rather work in metric or decimal inches. Fractions are a pain!
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What is holding the adjustable block in place?
THANKS
Daryl
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Hi Daryl. I think you are referring to the block that rides in the slot in the bottom plate and fits over the pivot pin. This block just floats in the slot. It connects to the dremel base via the long bolt. The bottom plate just keeps everything aligned. Hope that helps. I’m about to cut some more rosette channels, so I’ll have to pull it back out of the drawer in a week or so. I can take some better shots of it if you need.
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Hi Tony,
Ok thanks. If you get a chance to take some more pics that would be great.
Thanks
Daryl
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Will do.
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