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Old 03-27-2020, 08:15 AM
charles Tauber charles Tauber is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2011
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When I first starting making guitars, I was taught to inlay the back strip much as you have done, by running a router along a straight edge. However, a "trick" that I was taught was instead of using the flat side of the router/Dremel base against the straight edge fence, use the round side.

By affixing pieces of tape to the round side of the router base to form a progressively thicker layer of tape, one creates a base that has a spiral edge to it rather an a circular one. As one rotates the router against the fence, the cutter is offset slightly to produce a wider cut. One can then "dial in" the width of the cut using a single cutter without having to reposition the straight edge fence, or custom fit the back strip to the width of the slot.

The technique is not meant to produce, say a 1/2" wide slot using a 3/8" cutter, but works quite well for small adjustments in width.


In more recent years, I've seen no reason to inlay the back strip. Instead, I simply sandwich it between the two halves of the back at the time the centre seam in glued together. In my experience, there is no practical advantage or disadvantage to inlaying vs. sandwiching the back strip, but sandwiching it is much less work.
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