I built this thing based on the description of the parts kit that Stewart-MacDonald supplies to build a GoBar deck. Their hardware-only kit costs about $69.00 US$, and I got the hardware and the 3/4" MDF that I used to build this thing for about $40 from The Home Depot. This amount included the MDF for the Dreadnaught Body Mold. The deck uses 24-inch fiberglass rods to apply pressure to whatever you're gluing.

The top and bottom panels are each two layers of 3/4" MDF 24" square glued together. The vertical rods are 1/2" threaded rods 36" long.

I got these two dishes (which are made from 3/4" MDF) from an Ebay seller for about $105 including shipping. StewMac sells them for about $90 each plus shipping. Ouch! I also found an article on the Musical Instrument Maker's Forum (MIMF) that described how to build a router jig to make your own radius dishes, but decided that life would be a lot simpler if I just bought them.

These dishes are used with the GoBar deck to glue the braces to the top and back, and they are also used to sand the edges of the sides to conform to the curvature of the top and back.

I have seen these on Ebay for about $75 plus shipping, and decided to make my own. I built the body mold using all four layers of MDF, so that the mold is a full three inches thick. It is built in two halves that can be separated to remove the mold once the body has been glued up.

The two wood straps hold the halves of the mold together--there are two more on the other side.

This picture shows the body mold with the body in place. At this point, the back had been glued on, but the top had not.

This router base enables me to use my Dremel Tool four various light-duty routing tasks. As you can see from the picture, this comes from Stewart-MacDonald.

The tasks I plan to use this guy for are:

  • Routing the channels in the edges of the guitar body for the bindings and purflings. This requires the Router edge guide attachment.
  • In the future, I'll use this with the rosette circle cutter attachment to rout channels for the rosettes (the decorative rings around the guitar sound holes)
  • Freehand routing for inlays in headstocks, fretboards, and whatever.

This device attaches to the Precision Router Base and adapts it to circle-cutting tasks, including cutting the inlay channels for soundhole rosettes, and to cut the soundholes in guitar tops.

This device also attaches to the Precision Router Base as shown below. This thing makes it possible to cut the rabbet channels on the guitar body abd fingerboard for the bindings and purflings.

And this is what the router base looks like installed on the Dremel Tool, with the Edge guide in place as well.

 

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(c) Copyright 2005 by Stephen Cyr
Last updated January 11, 2005

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