Cad Templates

[JJ Rodriguez]

I've heard of people printing out CAD templates for fretting, as well as other kinds of templates. Does anyone have a CAD template for a 27 inch scale length fret board? An engineer at the place I work at said he could print some stuff off on the plotter for me, so I'd like to see if I could get some useful stuff printed up, either templates I can build out of plywood for the shape of the body or tapering the neck, or anything really.

[ToneMonkey]

If you use the formula for working out where the frets are located (have a search, it's been linked to several times). Then the engineer at work would be able to draw it in a matter of minutes. It would probably take him about 30 seconds to tell you how to do it.

[spazzyone]

27" fret scale

fret from nut fret to fret

1 1.515" 1.515" (nut-1)

2 2.946" 1.430" (1-2)

3 4.296" 1.350" (2-3)

4 5.570" 1.274" (3-4)

5 6.773" 1.203" (4-5)

6 7.908" 1.135" (5-6)

7 8.980" 1.072" (6-7)

8 9.991" 1.011" (7-8)

9 10.946" 0.955" (8-9)

10 11.847" 0.901" (9-10)

11 12.697" 0.850" (10-11)

12 13.500" 0.803" (11-12)

13 14.258" 0.758" (12-13)

14 14.973" 0.715" (13-14)

15 15.648" 0.675" (14-15)

16 16.285" 0.637" (15-16)

17 16.886" 0.601" (16-17)

18 17.454" 0.568" (17-18)

19 17.990" 0.536" (18-19)

20 18.496" 0.506" (19-20)

21 18.973" 0.477" (20-21)

22 19.423" 0.451" (21-22)

23 19.849" 0.425" (22-23)

24 20.250" 0.401" (23-24) thanks Stewmac

Notes on fret layout

The most accurate way to lay out your scale is making all measurements from the nut (using the "fret to fret" distance only to confirm your layout). Laying out frets only by measuring fret to fret will compound error. For example, if you're laying out frets by marking with a scribe and your accuracy is plus or minus 10 thousandths, you could be off by as much as 1/8 inch at the 12th fret.

Measurements are given from the end of the fingerboard (face of the nut) to the center of a fret slot.

as far as cad i can make a dxf file. but would need to know nut width and width of the last fret

[sexybeast]

I've used fretcalc to print them out and then measured just to be sure. It seems accurate.

[fryovanni]

Here is a little trick for fellow CAD monkeys out there. This is not my idea, as I saw it done for standard spacing. I just needed to be able to make a tool that worked with my modified spacing.

So, Draw up a line for your nut location. Copy it with ortho tool on the distances specified from nut to frets, and finally total distance to bridge. After it is finished select your lines and scale it to reference from center of the nut to center of the bridge. Give the scale tool 1" as the new length. After you have done this you can copy the lines and scale them to any scale quickly (say you want a 24" scale spacing simpy scale it up 24x, 25.5"scale it 25.5x etc...). You could just scale to reference as you originally did, but the 1" starting point seems a bit simpler. The same process can be used for fret spacing that has been adjusted for special compensation. Any scale can be created int about 2-3 seconds after you have created the template.

Peace,Rich

[imott]

I used an Epilog Laser engraver to cut the fretboard AND fret slots. Seven minutes from blank to ready-to-radius fretboard!