Believe it or not, this awful looking chunk of wood actually became the back the jazz guitar mandolin pictured above. You can see a copy of the same plans you can buy here at this site.

Technically, the plans I have for sale here are not really plans of instruments. They are technical drawings.  The drawings are almost all full scale, and very few measurements are given.  I prefer to build the instruments by photocopying the plans, and the lightly pasting them on to the wood I am using. It then becomes a simple matter of cutting on the lines to build your instrument.

Speaking of photocopies, all the plans offered here are copyrighted. My copyright policy allows the user to make unlimited numbers of instruments for noncommercial purposes.  It also allows users to photocopy the plans for their own destructive use, as detailed above.  It does NOT permit a user to either give away or sell any copy or original of the plans unless they no longer retain either. Please contact me with any questions.

Cam Clamp

Price Reduced! You can never have too many clamps in a workshop - particularly if you are building musical instruments. These cam clamps are the accepted standard for luthier use. They are  built of hardwood and aluminum or steel. Building these classic clamps requires the ability to cut accurate mortises and to flatten rivet heads. Includes step by step directions.

Cam Clamp - 1 Plate ............... $5.00 $3.00

Simple Scaler II Fret Scale Software

The length of a Fret Scale is the length between the nut and the bridge of the instrument. You can calculate your own custom fret scale by taking the distance between the nut and  the bridge, and dividing it by 17.817. This gives you the distance to the first fret. The  next fret can be calculated by taking the remaining distance between the last fret and the nut, and dividing it by the same number. You can do this over and over again, until you have found all the frets that you want.

If this sounds tedious and time consuming to you, you are correct. That is why all of  our plans come with a fret scale already calculated. However, if you modify the  instrument, or do not exactly follow the plans the distance will be wrong, and you will  need a custom fret scale. That is what computers are for. We offer The Simple Scaler, a complete Windows based fret calculation package. The photo provided below is an actual screen shot of the program in operation.

At the low price of $5, The Simple Scaler will pay for itself on your first fret scale calculation. It is very simple to use. You simply measure the distance between the nut and  the bridge on your instrument in either cm or inches, and feed that number into the blank.  Adjust for the number of frets desired, and print out your own custom fret scale. You can print a chart, or you can select template.  Fretting with a template is as simple as  lightly pasting a piece of paper onto your fretboard, and slotting on the lines.  As  far as I know, this is the only fret calculator package on the market with this capability.

Shipping for The Simple Scaler is provided one of two ways.  You may either choose to have the program emailed to you (this is free), or you may have a hard copy mailed to you.  Either way, we highly recommend this program for any serious Luthier.

This program requires Windows 95 or higher.

Simple Scaler II - emailed download instructions ............... $5.00

Simple Scaler II - on floppy disk ............... $10.00