STANISZCZAK — lutherie workshop, est. 2026
Switch language to English EN Switch language to Polish PL
Contact

Fret slotting station

Beta This jig is in beta: the files are generated and checked, but the design may still change. Check the drawing against your instrument before you cut.

Fret slotting station, assembled

Every physical part, bought ones included. Hover a row to find it in the model, click a part to read what it is, and colour by function or by part.

Loading the model…

Colour by

Click a part in the model to read what it is.

  • Base plate
  • Bridge
  • Indexer
  • Stop blocks
  • Depth stops
  • Board hold-downs
  • Fasteners
  • References
Base plate
  • The flat reference everything else is bolted to, and the surface the template slides on.
  • The same plate for a workshop with no laser shop: same holes, nut pockets built in, and a relief everywhere but the template's runway. An alternative — switch it on and the cut base plate steps aside.
Bridge
  • Carries the guide rollers the saw plate runs between, and the tabs the depth stops hang from.
Indexer
  • Drops a roller into each V notch on the template, which is what fixes the fret position.
Stop blocks
  • One of the two points the template registers against; this one does not move.
  • The other registration point. Its bushing turns to take the yaw error out of the cut.
Depth stops
  • The half that is the same whatever saw you use: the fixed rollers define this face.
  • The half cut for YOUR saw: its rest face sits at the plate thickness plus 0.15.
Board hold-downs
  • What your fingers turn to clamp the fingerboard down onto the template.
  • Sits between the screw and the board so the clamping load does not mark the wood.
Fasteners
  • One of the four guide rollers the saw plate runs between.
  • The rolling face of a stop block — what the template actually touches.
  • The indexer's roller, the one that drops into each notch.
  • The indexer roller's axle: pressed in on a drop of cyanoacrylate, held only from above.
  • The whole force holding the roller down in its notch. Any ballpoint-pen spring in the range does; the preload screw takes up the difference.
  • A stop block's bearing axle, running through the base plate to a nut underneath.
  • Under the base plate, on a stop block's axle.
  • Under the stop bearing, so it turns on steel and not on plastic.
  • Preload: two set the compliant rollers, one tensions the indexer.
  • Locks a preload screw where it was set.
  • A guide roller's axle, down through the bridge deck.
  • Under a guide bearing, and the lowest static thing over the board — which is why it is the thin one.
  • Bolts a printed part down onto the base plate — the length is that part's own height.
  • Under the base plate, on a mounting bolt.
  • Spreads a mounting bolt's load over the 5 mm plate.
  • Winds a depth-stop half up or down; a thin nut is captive in the half and an ordinary one locks it.
  • Captive in a depth-stop half — the one to check for when buying, since it is not a standard M6 nut.
  • Locks a depth-stop screw where the calibration left it.
  • The long screw of a board hold-down: knob on top, foot on the wood.
  • Captive in the bridge deck, so the hold-down screw has something to turn in.
References
  • A template, to show where one sits and how the notches meet the indexer. Yours comes from the Template tab.
  • A 7 mm fingerboard under the hold-downs — mid-range, so the knobs stand where they really would.
  • Plate, spine and handle where a fret saw would be, at the deepest cut this station allows. One part: it is one saw.

Assembling the station

The names in bold are the names the 3D model uses. Open the Assembly tab on the jig's page, hover a part in the list and it lights up in the model — or click it in the model and it tells you what it is. Every bought part is in there too, down to each nut.

1. The plywood needs two counterbores before the base plate is bolted down

Using base_plate_printed.stl instead of the cut sheet? Skip this section entirely. The printed plate carries both nut pockets in its own underside, so there is nothing to drill.

Ten of the base plate's twelve holes are through-bolts with a washer and nut under the plywood, where there is room for them. Two are not: the stop-block bearing axles have their nuts directly under the 5 mm PMMA, because there is nowhere inside the block to put one — the bearing fills the whole height below the roof. Drill for those two, or the plate will not sit flat on the plywood.

station X, Y from the plate's near-left corner Ø depth
fixed stop axle −50, −5 42.0, 21.0 10 mm 3 mm
eccentric stop axle +50, −5 142.0, 21.0 10 mm 3 mm

The plate is 184 × 146 mm; the "near-left corner" is the corner at station (−92, −26), the one on the operator's side at the −X end. Both counterbores sit at Y = −5, which is 21 mm in from that edge: the bearing's axis is one bearing radius BEHIND the datum line its own outer ring defines at Y = 0, which is what makes the ring touch the template rather than swallow it.

Do not measure them by hand. base_plate.dxf carries them on a layer called PLYWOOD, drawn at exactly these positions and diameters, from the same registry as the holes above them. Lay the cut plate on the plywood, mark through the two PLYWOOD circles, and drill there — a 10 mm Forstner bit 3 mm deep. That layer is not for the laser: it is magenta, it is named so nobody mistakes it, and the bundle README tells the shop to cut CUT only.

2. The fixed stop and the eccentric stop: their 623ZZ bearings

Per stop block, from the bottom: base plate → M3 washer → 623ZZ → the block's own pocket roof. The washer is not optional packing — it is what puts the bearing on the template's mid-plane, 0.5 mm above the plate, which is too thin to print as a shelf. The M3 screw runs from the top of the block through the plate into the nut in the counterbore you just drilled.

Nothing clamps the bearing: it is a roller with 0.2 mm of end float in a pocket 0.4 mm wider than its outer race. That is the retention, and it is deliberate — nothing touches the outer race and nothing is pressed into plastic.

The +X block takes the eccentric bushing in its roof, above the bearing, with the screw through the bushing's off-centre bore. Turning the bushing walks screw and bearing together, ±0.5 mm in Y; that is the station's only geometry adjustment, and the bundle README has the procedure.

3. The indexer's MR63ZZ bearing on its Ø3 × 16 dowel pin — one drop of CA

The roller runs on a Ø3 × 16 ground dowel pin, not a screw, and the pin is held only by an interference fit in a blind bore in the head. There is no alternative: seated in its V notch the roller's axis stands 0.74 mm proud of the template's edge while the roller itself sits inside the template's thickness, so nothing — nut, cap, circlip, clevis cheek — can live underneath it without being struck by the template.

Push the pin in from below, through the roller, until it stops. The bore is blind: the pin bottoms out 1.5 mm under the head's top face and that is what sets where its other end lands — flush with the roller's underside, with nothing below it. The boss the pin is gripped by reaches down to Z = 5.5, half a millimetre over the template and half a millimetre over the roller turning under it; the boss must not touch either.

An interference fit in PETG will not hold forever: the plastic creeps, and a joint that is loaded and unloaded at every fret loosens. So:

Put one drop of cyanoacrylate on the pin before you press it in.

Press the bearing onto the pin first, then push the assembly up into the blind bore until the pin bottoms out. Wipe the squeeze-out before it reaches the bearing. The bearing on the pin is an ordinary shaft fit and needs no glue.

4. Then follow the bundle README

Order, calibration of the eccentric, depth setting on the four depth-stop halves, and the per-fret procedure are all in the station bundle's own README.md, in English and Polish.

This is the same text that ships inside this jig's bundle, so the copy on your bench and the copy on this page are one file.