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Finger board thickness
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RobF
Posts: 1516
Joined: Aug. 24 2017
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 RE: Finger board thickness (in reply to Stu)
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Hi Stu, thought you were in Sanlucar.
6mm is a good amount for a flamenco, but a little thicker or thinner is OK, too. You will have to adjust for the neck angle, there’s no getting around it, a gap-free fit can’t be achieved with pressure alone. The amount removed will vary from guitar to guitar, but it’ll be the same amount as the gap found at the 12th when measured with a straightedge from the nut to soundhole. Generally the fingerboard itself is used as the straightedge. Also, the ramp from 12th to SH is best done with a plane, as sandpaper has a nasty habit of rounding off towards the edges, which will lead to a difficult fitting. Try to make the transition at the 12th nice and crisp.
There’s many ways to do things, of course, but the suggestions above should get you to where you want to be.
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Date Aug. 1 2022 23:17:33
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RobF
Posts: 1516
Joined: Aug. 24 2017
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RE: Finger board thickness (in reply to Stu)
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Hi Stu,
Regardless of what’s expected from the workboard setup, the fingerboard should be fitted to the guitar as it exists, rather than to the theoretical. If you can’t see a gap or angle then there’s no point in attempting to adjust for one. I mean, how can the adjustment amount even be determined if it can’t be seen? If it appears to fit, then it probably does, lol.
I think it might be safest to stop pursuing this, re-flatten the bottom of the fingerboard and thickness it to a touch more than 6.5mm*, with the idea that the fingerboard surface planing can take care of any deviations in neck angle from expected. A workboard with a cork based perimeter does have some give, so maybe that’s part of what’s going on. Workboards, in general, can have their own idiosyncrasies and each one often needs a bit of tuning to get it where you want it to be. In your case, having a shim at the nut end gives a lot of flexibility to adjust things once you get them figured out.
I’d be concerned that you might run out of fingerboard depth to play with if you keep chasing this angle adjustment thingy-poo.
* hopefully the fingerboard is still thick enough at the soundhole end to be flattened. If adding the ramp has thinned it down too much then it might still be salvageable by planing the bottom flat, but in a wedge shape going thicker towards the nut, kind of like how you started out. The concern is if the entire board is flattened to the soundhole end’s thickness it might then be a too thin to work with when planing the surface to hit the bridge at the right height. Also, if the neck has no offset (or very small) then then fingerboard will naturally take on a wedge shape when planing the surface during prep, so it’s ok to start out that way.
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Date Aug. 2 2022 23:15:09
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RobF
Posts: 1516
Joined: Aug. 24 2017
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RE: Finger board thickness (in reply to Stu)
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quote:
kinda dreading the planing/sanding the bass taper into the ebony!!
For a flamenco you can look at the bass taper as optional, IMO. One reason is the difference of height between the two ‘E’ strings is quite a bit less than on a classical, so the delta at the bridge will be correspondingly less. The other is due to the use of a capo in flamenco. Because of the capo it’s sometimes better to treat the taper as more of a twist, trying to keep the board as flat as possible at each fret. Even if you favor a slight crown to the fingerboard, it works better when approached as a twist than a bass-side taper (meaning the crown is consistent across frets, even if the surface is treated like a cone rather than a cylinder). A third reason is an abrupt taper can lead to buzzing on the “D” string, generally in the transition area, as the string can be closer to the frets than the 12th fret measurement implies.
But that’s going pretty deep. Bottom line is doing the bass-side taper isn’t always necessary, seeing a bit of rise in the saddle can be compensated for by adjusting the wood of the bridge to make it look more even, if one desires.
I’m not sure how everyone else does it, I’ve done it different ways over the years, at this point I’m more inclined to keep a flamenco’s fingerboard either flat or, if I do want to drop the bass, with a very slight twist. It would be interesting to know how other makers on here approach it (tapered or flat fingerboard).
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Date Aug. 4 2022 14:39:13
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RobF
Posts: 1516
Joined: Aug. 24 2017
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RE: Finger board thickness (in reply to Ricardo)
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quote:
The main issue is that there is a general misconception that a low action (buzzing strings)=flamenco set up, and that it is “easy” to make the Goldilocks set up happen on each instrument if desired.
This is true.
Except for a new guitar it’s nice to plan for future adjustability and many makers will aim for 8mm and won’t mind if they end up with 7.5mm on a new guitar. 7mm can be nervous making because there’s not a lot of wiggle room left for adjustments, which is desirable to have on a new instrument (they can settle over time and also different players will want different string heights at the 12th and the saddle height will have to change to achieve that). Plus, nowadays people seem to want to see a lot of bone sticking up out of the bridge, which isn’t easy to achieve with 7mm. I think that comes from a cross pollination of modern steel string world sensibilities coupled with a lack of understanding of why the traditional bridge was designed the way it was to start with, most likely.
It also can depend on the maker’s strategy (or business case). High volume places will want to make every guitar dimensionally identical and will adjust their design to allow for this while a lot of smaller quantity makers, by nature, will approach each guitar as a separate project falling within a slightly looser set of dimensional parameters and that will naturally lead to small variations in setup. Within reason, of course, there’s no need to re-invent the wheel each time.
But, you’re right. It’s hard to nail it. Making every guitar come out at 7mm saddle and, say, 2.8mm at the 12th with optimal sound and playability would be bloody difficult. I wouldn’t even claim it, too stressful and too much chance for embarrassment. As that pirate guy said about parlay, it’s better to see the numbers as guidelines, rather than rules.
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Date May 18 2023 13:31:42
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