Showing posts with label Irving Sloane deep throat wooden guitar clamps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Irving Sloane deep throat wooden guitar clamps. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Deep-throat guitar-maker's clamps

I built some clamps as described in Irving Sloane's Classical Guitar Construction. I drew a full-sized template based on his diagrams and used some 1 x 2 maple scraps to make them. I got a 1" x 3/16" x 48" steel bar from the local hardware store and cut it into four 1-ft sections.

The upper and lower jaws start out the same, so I clamped them all together and ran them through the dado blade to cut the inside relief. This can also be done with a standard tablesaw blade--you just have to make more passes. I used a 1/4" mortising bit to make the mortises for the steel bar and used a 1/4" stopped-dado to cut the recess for the cam-lever. A disk sander quickly rounded the corners of the 1/4" x 1" x 4" cam-levers.

I used compression pins to hold everything together and put felt pads on the jaws. It took less than 2 hours to make four complete clamps.