Fingerboard thickness

[Pat.Hawkins]

Hi Folks,
Just preparing my first neck.
I have cut in the fret slots on the finger board and am about to sand to 12" radius.

Before I do though, what starting thickness should my finger board blank be?

Cheers

[Allen]

What type of instrument. How many strings? What's the width at the nut. What's the width at the sound hole? It all makes a difference.

With a 12" radius the depth of the sides of the fret board will be less at the sound hole (wide) end than at the nut because you have to take more of them off for the sanding block to touch the centre of the board.

But if you are doing a ukulele, then 4.5mm thick before radiusing will give you approximately 3.2 - 3.5mm left of the sides so it's easy to put a side dot in.

[Pat.Hawkins]

Thanks Allen (A lesson there)

Its a steel string (6) guitar
45mm at the nut and 55 at the 14th fret (scale 25.4)

I think that makes it typical.
(If there is such a thing)?
Cheers

[Allen]

I only just finished a parlour guitar fret board with pretty similar sizing. Mine is a compound radius with 10" at the nut blending into 12 through the body, and 16" at the wide end. Sides of fret board are 3.5mm tall the entire way and middle of the board ended up at 4.5mm. But this would be considered thin for a guitar. I'm building a pretty delicate short scale one.

[Gsanbrook]

.25 inch usually works.

[demonx]

The nut width is the most important factor to consider (the way I calculate it), as the wider the nut, at the same radius the board needs to be thicker as it'll thin out considerably at the binding edge, even more so at a deeper radius.

I build electrics using a 16" radius and I use 6mm for a six string blank before I radius, 7mm for a seven string, 8mm for an 8 string (these are rough estimates, the actual figures are in decimals)

Your 45mm nut width is closest to my 48mm 7 string nut width, assuming that you want a thicker board than I use, as I do mine reasonably thin, I would guess you would want to start with a blank drum sanded to approx 7.5mm, but that's only a wild guess