PRSpoggers

I am doing my first neck with white limba and honduran rosewood and they are hard to work with, that combined with dull chisels and hand planes dont make it a fun time. I was thinking ebony would be a good choice for a fretboard wood.

I'm working on my first ever guitar build and I am slotting the neck. It's a very hard task to complete with a miter box and a fret saw and scale template for the frets. I would consider for the future getting the stew mac fret slotting jig but thats over 2oo dollars. Not a wise investment for a tool I'd only be using once in a while. For my first guitar, I will have to learn from my mistakes of fret slotting but how? I've considered a few ways, building a jig w/the indexing pin stew mac provided with my fret ruler, manually measure everything out or cut it with the jig with a table saw. I am getting a membership at a woodworking shop that provides me 2 hour blocks of full access to the workshop and tools. Every luthier doesn't have a perfect first guitar, yet I can learn from my mistakes. Where can I be pointed for guidance?

So my dad told me why not look for a workshop that you can rent out time and space for and I found one in Baltimore Maryland which is a 30 minute drive from my house and they have classes and open shop rental and I am so happy that I found this!!

Fret slotting

Ah so there may have to be another birthday gift to add to the list for me! Gosh and I want another amp! Hopefully that miter box from stew mac will do me well. But for my first time is using a regular miter box fine?

I assume most people on the forum are from across the pond! I met someone else on here from the same county actually!! But that is really reassuring!

I did my first ever slotting of a fingerboard yesterday and today I have to refill 6 or 7 slots because they don't exactly line up with my fret template that I am using. What tools are there that can do it like really fast and accurately without breaking the bank?

is it ok to make mistakes the first time? I had to fill about 6 indicating slots because they didn't line up. I'm going to have my dad recut those for me because I don't have the steadiest hands.

I mean for the most part, I only had to refill about 6 slots which is fine, it's gonna get covered by the fretwire anyway, but for the rest of them they are all pretty dead center. For the future, how do I make this easier?

I refilled them and they look great! A little darker since my rosewood dust is dark, but I just need to recut them and we're in business. I'll have my dad do that since I don't want to waste a perfectly good fretboard that has just indicating slots, not actual cut to depth slots currently.

These are my current slots, I tried lining them up the best I could

So most of my notches on the fretboard are center, I will post pics of what I am talking about

Ok so I will measure and refill and adjust accordingly!

Ok so thats good to know! I may have to refill like two notches because they aren't center. But all the rest of them line up and are in the ball park in the area of the notch (this is a half circle notch from stew mac for a fret scale length calculator.) so that's fun! I'm not supposed to get everything right the first time right?

Ok thats great! I mean your first guitar isn't supposed to be perfect? Heck I'm going off what Paul Reed Smith did for his first (simple mahogany body and neck SC guitar)