Go Board Clamping Tool Jig
One of the guitar specialty tools you should have to do without.
Have you ever heard of a “Go-Board“? That is the slang term for a great jig or specialized guitar making tool that will quickly and efficiently let you glue the braces on your top and back plates.
If you have ever have tried to glue top braces on a top plate with a combination of deep throat clamps, wood cam clamps, spring clamps or a combination of them, you know that it is not an easy task. Some of the negatives of using the direct clamping system are as follows:
Enter the “Go-Board” clamping system. This is a great tool to have in a guitar shop, even if you make only one guitar at a time or several. It’s main components are 2 pieces of 1″ cabinet grade plywood that form the top and bottom and (4) posts (1 at each corner) to anchor the top plywood to the bottom plywood. Some people use wood for the columns and other use pieces of steel conduit with threaded bolts. I prefer the wood as it is more traditional and I just like to have all of my tool look in cabinet-grade condition.
The second piece in this brace-clamping pie are the actual dowels that apply pressure to the braces. You have several options available to you. First you can purchase 1/4″ hardwood dowels and taper the ends and round the tip. An alternative to the tapering is to place a rubber foot over the end of the dowel, which adds slip resistance and completely protects the brace. The main problem with dowels is that after repeated use they tend to retain some memory of the bend and loose their effectiveness.
A great alternative to the hardwood dowels are fiberglass dowels. These are often available at hardware stores and big box store in the fall and winter as they are used for marking drives in the snow-belt. They provide good clamping pressure, do not retain as much bend memory and you can clean glue off them very easily. They are a more expensive alternative though. The ends can be tapered and rounded just like the wood dowels or you can add the rubber feet.
The biggest trick of the entire go-board construction is getting the length of the corner posts just right so the dowels bend enough to get the right amount of pressure, but not too much. This will take a bit of trial and error, but I think you will find that if the dowels are 2″ longer than the distance from the top of the highest brace to the underside of the top go-board plate, you will good.
You will find that with this system you can Very quickly clamp a top, do it with adequate and even pressure, have good access to glue-cleaning operations and minimize damage to the plate and braces. The one problem with the go-board is clamping braces with a crown, such as back braces. There are two ways to handle this. Either slip tight-fitting wedges between the guitar back plate and the go-board -or- which I feel is a much better solution, cut some tappered cauls that match the brace crowns and place them beneath the braces. Line these with leather or cork to protect the tonewood. Make them approximately 1-1/2″ wide and be sure to shape them nicely.
There you have it. One of the easiest tools to make in the shop and one that will save you a great deal of time.
Are you interested in a plan of this jig? If so, we will be putting together plans for all the jigs, molds and specialty tools that we talk about on this site. Be sure to leave a comment that you would like one or drop me an email. The pricing will be very reasonable and will save you a lot of time and take the guesswork out of something that is proven to work. This one is only $5.99 and you get all the detail and materials specs to build one.
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Go-Board Clamping Tool Plans
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Heated Side Bender Info page
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Cutaway Jig Info Page
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Go Board Info Page
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Plate Jointing Jig Info Page
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Tags: go board tool, guitar making, guitar making tools, luthier tools
