Tools for "advanced" tailpiece making

[Goran74]

Hello,

I have made a few tailpieces - classical french and baroque models - with hand tools (hand fretsaw, hand drill, plane, some chisels, scrappers...). I had an issue keeping the angle of the holes same and opening the groove for the saddle. 

Which electric tools can enhance the tailpiece production and make "pro results" at -> shaping, holes and saddle? (electric fretsaw, drill press, milling drill, lathe etc - NO CNC please)

[Michael Darnton]

Overhead pin router with an appropriate set of jigs?
Before CNC pin routers were the solution to every problem and you can probably buy a nice used one cheap now.

[FiddleDoug]

You could always build of buy a copy router. It's not a CNC.

https://wood-carver.com/

[MeyerFittings]

Here's a couple pics. I start it all from a rectangle to keep the angles straight. I have a cradle on a designated drill press to drill the hole horizontal and at the right angle. I cut the slot for the saddle with a spline cutter with the blank in a cradle that looks like a roof top. This was not easy to make. It's not worth it to set up all this for one-off tps. So I make a bunch at a time in different lengths. The adjuster recesses are made with a cove bit that I have had specially honed to cut as a shovel shaped hole from the side- like a plunge router. The outer shape is done on a template using a router bit with a wheel to follow the outline.

Tailpieces, done well are much harder to make than pegs. Most of the work is just saws and files and 180 to 1500 paper. A tailpiece surface is analogous to an inverted boat hull.  Bill Watson used to be given rough tailpieces from the Hill shop to take home and finish at the kitchen table for extra money to go to camp for his vacation. Arthur Bultitude would look at them the nest day and make pencil mark to point out bumps and valleys to be taken back home to correct. This was part of Bill's bowmaking training. . 

[Goran74]

Thank you all for your answers. I will think about the router - I do not have one. Copy router is a bit expensive for now. 

14 hours ago, MeyerFittings said:

. I have a cradle on a designated drill press to drill the hole horizontal and at the right angle.

Thank you for your answer and your time. So the cradle has to be the solution for keeping the angles. Your taipieces and pegs are excellent and of course I know about the quality of your work. 

 

14 hours ago, MeyerFittings said:

Tailpieces, done well are much harder to make than pegs.

Please, one bit off topic question, but since you make violin pegs, what kind of (lathe) chisel do you use at the most? Can you specify?

[MeyerFittings]

Thanks for the compliment. The lathe is in the photo. It's an Atlas/Clausing machinist lathe where the vertical axis is disconnected and a pointer is mounted on the carriage. Very low tech.  If you look to the right you can see it.

[Goran74]

3 hours ago, MeyerFittings said:

Thanks for the compliment. The lathe is in the photo. It's an Atlas/Clausing machinist lathe where the vertical axis is disconnected and a pointer is mounted on the carriage. Very low tech.  If you look to the right you can see it.

Thank you again. I asked about the "chisels" that you work with for the pegs and not the machine (the lathe). Probably my mistake cause english are not my native language.

[David Burgess]

12 hours ago, Goran74 said:

Thank you all for your answers. I will think about the router - I do not have one. Copy router is a bit expensive for now. 

I don't thing it's a "copy router" that Eric is using. It is an "edging router bit", similar to that used for flush-trimming formica laminate on countertops. If you don't have a router, this bit could probably be used in a drill press set to high speed if the drill press doesn't have a lot of sideways slop. But if you have neither, a router would probably be a lot less expensive than a drill press.

One can also use a sanding drum in a drill press, with a nerd the same diameter as the sanding drum clamped to the drill press table to follow a pattern beneath the tailpiece.

[MeyerFittings]

I only use a chisel to hog off wood on the concave "French" style cello pegs. I do this mostly because it's fun. David is right about the router bit, the router being mounted to the underside of a table. I use various means to remove the majority of the wood including the band saw and the dowel mounted in the lathe pictured above.  Everything gets the final treatment with files and paper though. 

[wm_crash]

As an amateur turner, I am looking at that heart inside cut and thinking to myself: is there a jig? or maybe several? who sells those cutters? how many do you break just making one set of pegs? does the peg ever just split open with a bad catch? how do you sand inside the heart?

Despite all these questions, I'd like to reassure everyone that I do get a good night's sleep.

cheers,
Cosmin

[MeyerFittings]

No one sells them. You have to grind them. I eventually made a jig it took a long time to figure it all out and you break a lot of them doing it. You'd certainly rather break the peg than the cutter. Anything a little off or not on the same plane and you'll be making another one soon.

After a marvelous tour of Eric Fouille's shop in France, where all his employees came in on a Holliday to meet me, I asked him to show me the first tool he ever made to make the heart cut. He smiled and rummaged around in an old tool chest and found it. I almost fell over laughing. It looked just like the one that I came up with. Great guy- and he looks like Eric Clapton too.