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I'm not especially satisfied with the way my slotted headstocks have turned out. I'm been using a doweling jig to drill the tuner holes, and they are not always accurately lined up no matter how well I layout the spacing, so I've been thinking about buying a jig from either LMI or StewMac. The LMI jig requires a little more set up for drilling the holes, but has the advantage of having a router template for use in routing the slots themselves. The StewMac jig is pretty much self aligning as far as getting the tuner hole spacing centered and aligned regardless of the thickness of the peghead, but then you still have to do the slots some other way. I'm leaning towards the LMI jig unless someone can recommend something better. I've been holding out on account of cost, but I'm looking to improve the consistency on the spacing for the tuners and drilling/cutting of the slots. Any advice or recommendations would be appreciated.
Thanks!

I'd recommend you also take a look at "Luthier Tool Company's" jig. It's the one I ended up buying. You can
get it set up to do everything (Steel String or Classical slot head, top drill Steel String), or you can get it
with just enough features to do one of these, and add other capabilities later. Here's the URL

http://www.luthiertool.com/slot%20head%20fixture.html

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Gene

Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason- Mark Twain

I use the Stew Mac bar to do the peg holes on the side of the headstock.

For the slots, I carefully mark the center of the end of the slot (does that make sense?) then use a 1/2" forstner (or whatever width your slots will be) to drill the 4 end holes.

Then, I switch to a 3/8" forstner and hog out all the material in between.

Then, on to a sharp chisel, and a tiiiiny scraper.

I leave the ends of the slot rounded for the -18 style look, or square them off for the -28 style look.
If squaring them off, it helps to use a 1/16" or 3/32" bit to drill at the square corner edges. That way, you have something to chisel to. It's hard to cut into a square corner, for me, at least.

I second the Luthier Tools jig. It works great and is a piece of art in it's own right,
Mike

I made my own fixtures. One for Steel and one for classical peg heads. They are 2 part fixtures. One fixture for drilling the holes using hardened drill bushings and with blocks for pre-drilling the slots. The 2nd fixture has over sized plates to accommodate my Festool router, and lots of support, actually overkill but I used material I had laying around. The plates are doweled in the middle to insure alignment from side to side and I made a couple of pins to fit the drilled holes which pretty much locks everything into place because of the different angles. The only adjustment I need to make is to put the peghead where I want it, clamp until I drill a hole in each side and then pin it into place.
Looks like this:

The drilling fixture bottom

Inside look

outside look

Slotting Fixture Top

Finished Peghead

Slotting Fixture bottom with a couple of pins

I use a method described by Pete Howlet. Unfortunately the video has been removed.

viewtopic.php?f=10117&t=34348&hilit=slot

Similar to this

http://www.acousticguitarconstructionfo ... f=14&t=995

I customized it for my design.

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Thank You and Best To All

For drilling the capstan holes, I use a variation on the John Gilbert/LMII style of jig, plans for building it on p 4-50, white book. If you do both steel string and classical you'll need two jigs (same spacing, different hole diameters) and it'll be easier to make two jigs than just one with different size bushings.

For machining the slots, in the book I show a method using a coping saw and table router. This works well enough but is not very quick. To be safe with the table router, the router cut needs to be just a clean up cut of less than 1mm, so the coping saw cut needs to be accurate.

As I rarely make two guitars that are exactly the same, I came up with this simple fixture that will do slots for both steel string and classical guitars. The slots for SS and CL need to be different widths and different distances in from the edge of the head stock. So I have one slot which is used with different sized router bushings to give the different slot widths and a doweled cleat that can be used on either side of the slot to give the different offsets from the edge of the head stock. So this one fixture will deal with any straight sided headstock shape with the slots at any angle to each other. I use a solid carbide 1" cut depth router bit and a big router which gives a very smooth, full depth cut (not in one hit!) and avoids the coping saw cuts or Forstner drill-outs. Some pics of the prototype in MDF:


...and the results...



If anyone knows of a neat jig for machining the string ramps, let the rest of us know, too!

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

I use the LMI jig. It has to be the one luthier jig that I have been happiest to have spent too much money for.

Tim's above looks really solid, though.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

I inherited a set of the Overholtzer alum jigs for ss and CL which he produced in the 80/s they are both shown in the overholtzer classical guitar book which he wrote. They are similiar to the others that were posted It/s a combo jig that cuts the tuner slots and holes in 1 jig, 2 seperate jig widths for the slots.

I drill the tuner holes by marking their locations and using a drill press. The slots I crunch out using a mortising attachment on the press and cleaning them up with a chisel and files. Routing the slots might give a cleaner result quicker, but I build different instruments with different peghead shapes (usually paddle heads) so jigging up would be difficult. With the modified bridle joint I can complete most of the work on the peghead before attaching it to the neck shaft.

Didn't Overholtzer have a jig for routing the ramps for classicals? I have a jig to rout the ramp for the bridal joint, but it would require some thought to make it work for the string ramps.

Robbie O'Brien has an interesting video using a drill press router.
http://www.obrienguitars.com/videos/

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

Some beautiful work here gentlemen. I have never done a slothead but likely will very soon. I wish Burton Legeyt would chime in as his are some of the nicest I've seen. Just my opinion. Tim

Oooooh, LT makes a 12 string jig. Wonder if it will also accept 6 string templates?

Luthiers Tool company jig

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guitarsbygiltzow.com

I use the luthiers tool jig for both ss and classical guitars. For odd ball sized instruments I use a drill and a chisel.

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http://www.Harvestmoonguitars.com

Everyone,
If this sample is any indication, seems like the Luthier Tool jig is the way to go for what I want. Since I'm anxious to get going on my next build and I'm looking for consistency, I would rather buy a jig rather than make one. Tim's jig is pretty substantial, and I did read my copy of the white book (Thanks, Trevor), but I've got the funds and hopefully there are plenty of slotted heads in my future on both classicals and steel strings, so I think I'll make the investment. Thanks everyone for the input and for the great examples
Marty

What can I possibly add? +1 for Luthier Tools. I could not decide between all the options, so I bought it all.

Mike

I just went to the luthier tools website, and he now has a great looking binding machine setup. It is a tower type with a constant tension spring to take weight off of the guitar, and an infinite adjustment attachment for the router that allows you to cut any width of binding with a 1/4 down spiral router bit. If I didn't already have the lmi tower which works great, but requires a different bearing for each width, this one looks very attractive.