Never trust 'other' peoples measurements!

[Kerry Krishna]

 Oh I am a bitter little man today.

 I collect and restore 1930s Kay Kraft two point guitars. There is only a small bit of info out there on these 'flawed beauties'. You would think, that since I have so many of them now, that I would KNOW better than to believe what a few folks who 'should actually know'  wouldn't you? 

 I made the mistake about 5 months ago, of listening to an online guitar guy who deals with these a lot, saying the exact scale length is 25.75. Same thing was said in two other articles that I read...

 I'll finally start making my own fretboards!  

   About 6 months ago, I had bought the 23/1000 ths power saw blade from Stewmac...(and a Wagner Safe T Planer too Frank!)

    Then I had found a gent off of the Mandocafe that made me a fretsloting template on his tickity-boo CNC machine.The templates were not all that expensive (30 bucks for 2 different scales) I emailed the guy in the morning, and he had them cut and mailed by 3:00 that afternoon!..

 I have a brand spanking new RIDGID Granite top tablsaw that I already know is trued up that I would have had to use today.

... Over the last week I had done some customizing work on one of my spindle sanders and set it up to also be a thickness sander just for the fretboards.  I had spent hours making/measuring and testing it, and getting it set up perfectly enough that any of you would have been happy to use it. (A  16th of a turn = .004....). Then  I finished  profiling and dimensioning three ebony boards to exactly what I needed...  

 

 So I take the template and wonder were on the template the nut slot should go, so I go get one of the Kay Krafts down off the wall to do a side by side....... Well, turns out that there is a 'slight' problem. 

The scale length is NOT 25.75, but is 25.66.........! CRAP

 

 Anyway, this will give me time to get the fret wire I need, and find another dedicated tablesaw. 

I am so unhappy with myself for not just taking one of my axes down off the wall, and checking the scale. Even if the template guy ships tomorrow, I will STILL be waiting two weeks for delivery...

 Why in the world did I believe that the scale was 25.75, and not check??? I am feeling just horrid at the moment, ....

[William F.Eden]

Well Kerry  I guess you have learnd a lesson. ? Are you building a new copy or are you puting a new board on an old one if it is an old one is there any reason that you still can't use what you have by moveing the board back or forth a bit. Just a thought. Bill.................

[William F.Eden]

I ment useing the new board you had made in place of the old one

[Pierre-Antoine Roiron]

Somedays, I am a bitter little man too. Most of the time, I forget it during the night... We all learn some lessons the hard way!

[Kerry Krishna]

William, there are LOTS of problems with the boards on these axes. They  were using wood unsuitable for fretboards for this,  uncured , and  gluing two pieces together using hot hide glue BUT at the wrong temperature. As a result these fretboards shrunk side to side in a dramatic way, breaking all the binding into 18 individual pieces on either side of the neck,  ALL the glue failed ( both layers coming apart from one another AND from the Fretboard). The boards are almost 100% impossible to get off  in  anything less than 10 pieces.  This last one, all I ended up with was a pile of sawdust, frets, broken binding, and not a single piece of wood longer than 3 inches. They just disintegrate altogether...

 The fretboard wood many times, turns to this otherworldly dust too. When heated, the porous  'mystery wood' smells like burned caramel. When it was new, it was quite pale also. Any ideas what wood it could have been? 

[Ron Ellison]

Forgive what might be a dumb question, but can't you just loose the 0.09" between the nut fret and the nut?

[Russell Vance]

Commiserations comrade Kerry and thank you for having the personal qualities which allows you to share this precautionary tale with us - I suspect if we all came clean about our "doozies" the forum would crash by dint of overload!   I once ordered a bunch of custom inlayed fingerboards from Kentucky which took 6 months to do and ship, at great expense, and having ordered 'original" LP Custom spec was rewarded with 24.6" boards instead of the 24.75 we were tooled up for.........sure, we worked around it but it can't be "unhappened" and my genius status (self annointed) suffered - as my cabinetmaker friends often say "measure twice, cut once".

[Kerry Krishna]

 Russell and Ron, thanks for your comments.After reading BOTH your posts, and wrapping my tiny brain around the mistake, I am rethinking all of this. Both of your combined posts  may have pushed me over the edge to  just use the template anyway.  it IS only .09 right Ron? 

 And Russell, what a nice comment.  Frank Ford years ago inspired me to start doing Instrument Repair Photoessays.   One of the ways I  keep my photoessays  interesting is to even document my mistakes, so folks get an exact idea of how smart I am!  

 Online Transparency has been becoming much more important to me over the last 5 years.  I really try to keep my 'online life' as transparent as possible without giving too much personal info out. As such, on all the Forums that I am on, my name is Kerry Krishna, not a pseudonym.  So many folks only hide their real identities, and a few of them are trolls, and if their REAL names were known, maybe they never would have posted and hurt honest folk. Although  in perspective of my own transparency, Kerry Krishna IS an old stage name, it has been my online name since the beginning of my online life 9 years ago. There are WAY more folks especially here in Canada, who know who Kerry Krishna is, but only a double handful know who Kerry Knettle is. I dont really have much to hide. Anyone can find me if they need me.  Thanks again to both of you for talking me through this. I feel way better  tonight than I did this morning! 

[Kerry Krishna]

Here is a good picture to whet your whistle!...

[Ron Ellison]

Good luck on your project. I hope it works out well.

[Ned Knepp]

Kerry, 

 The mandolin looks like mine except for the binding and dots. Originally, mine has a sun burst but someone (sort of) refinished it and made a mess of it. I don't know of you have a bridge for it but I would be happy to get pictures of mine if you need them. The bridge I have is a solid ebony bridge with a bone cap but it doesn't have the flare on the ends like the larger bridges.

 

I'm glad to see that your  mandola has black buttons on the tuners. My mandolin has black buttons and I've been wondering if they are original.