Best way to cut a fretboard reveal edge on for binding.

[Kerry Krishna]

So I need a black bottom edge of the fretboard slot cut, and white binding will be added. Is this clear?  I will post a picture....

[chris snyder]

Couldn't you just "fake it" with ebony(or any other fretboard wood) strips?

[Kerry Krishna]

I could.... 

 

[Ned Knepp]

I don't know why you couldn't cut it with a rabbet bit on a router table as long as the face isn't arched yet. I think I would want a very sharp bit and maybe tape off the edge I wanted to save. It might also be a good idea to do it is several passes. All of this is conjecture as I've never tried it on anything as potentially brittle as most fingerboard woods.

 

 

[Pierre-Antoine Roiron]

I would do it Ned's suggested way. Less time consuming then cutting a wood strip, glue it with a ivoroïd strip, thin it and glue it to the fretboard edge.

[Kerry Krishna]

I ended up using the new built thickness sander and used the ebony cutoffs from the side of the board. 

 Last time I did this, it worked out OK. Just labour intensive.  If I am going to be making lots of boards , I will try what Ned suggested. Thanks folks. 

 

[Russell Vance]

Agree with Ned, just rout a rabbet into the bare fingerboard (heaps of ways to jig it up) and then glue the binding strip into the rabbet and finish away to your hearts content.   You can also cut the rebate with a table saw fence and square tipped blade or Dado blade (heaps of ways to jig that as well. I regularly size fret slotted hard ebony boards with a 3/8 spiral router bit and given a stable tool platform and sharp bits experience little or no tear-out on 1/16" passes.

Alternatively...you could just fake it and stack two binding strips which isn't so hard and in the absence of table saws and router tables is probably a reasonable fix. R.

[Kerry Krishna]

Thanks Russell I appreciate your post.  If it were possible, I would be making up  a whole bunch of these boards, and doing the work all at the same time. The main problem with doing that though, is that on the Kay Krafts, the neck widths are all over the place. It might be that  '4 sizes fit all' but ... I 'could' buy a bunch  of ebony and slot all of them though. They would be ready for all the axes that I will be doing eventually. It would also be so nice to have some of them for sale as it is a quite odd scale length...

[Russell Vance]

Hi Kerry, Hmmm,   my experience with getting a whole bunch of stuff like machining and sizing done at once has been that by the time I get around to using it I have found a better way or no longer do what I used to do.....maybe one at a time until the demand picks up or the jobs start to flow?    Just an observation which may or may not be useful.  Rusty.

[John]

You could do it on a table saw. Use a sacrificial fence and raise the blade in to it. Table mounted router with a fence would work but I would go with the bit on the first pass and against on the second.