Tips on Fitting GaiaTone Fingerboards to Necks

Congratulations on selecting GaiaTone for your next fingerboard project. Whether you are fitting a fingerboard to your next new violin or replacing a board on an older instrument, you’ll love the look and feel of GaiaTone as an alternative material to the increasingly rare ebony wood.

GaiaTone, a material made from 100% post-consumer paper bound with a non-petroleum, resin shares many of the important characteristics of the finest ebony. It is strong, and hard, offering excellent protection to the neck while retaining excellent acoustical properties. It is naturally black and has the feel of ebony. The strength and hardness of the material will reduce long-term maintenance — regular dressings and resurfacing requirements will be much reduced.

Following are some tips to ease the installation process.

With the use of inexpensive and readily available tools, a GaiaTone fingerboard can be fit to any neck in just a matter of minutes. Once fitted and glued in place, these boards are almost carefree, requiring a minimum of reshaping or dressings over the life of the board.

GaiaTone is a hard material, and while it can be worked with the same tools you use to shape ebony, we recommend a few technique modifications.

GaiaTone fingerboards are available in various widths to accommodate most instruments, but these can be resized as needed. Try to purchase the board closest to the width you require.

If the width needs further reductions, we recommend using rough files or rasps. If you are comfortable with power tools, Dremel tools and sanders are also very effective and easy to use. Check the videos to watch them in action!

The top surface can be sanded, scraped, and planed much like ebony. As the boards are pre-scooped, most adjustments would be very slight or unnecessary, so sandpaper and scrapers should suffice. Planes can be used, but as GaiaTone is very hard, we suggest you use a plane with a steep bevel angle to preserve the sharpness or, better, use the custom steel mounting plate with tungsten-carbide inserts available off this website.

Vermont Violins has created customised blade inserts to replace made from tungsten carbide that can be easily exchanged from the standard steel blades most planes come with. Steel blades fade quickly, but carbides do not and retain sharpness for many years. The insert adapter is a one-time purchase. individual double-sided blade is inexpensive and easy to switch out. With diamond media-sharpening tools like a diamond stone, these carbide inserts can be readily sharpened in your workshop. Alternatively, V. Richelieu offers a resharpening service where you can send it to us, and we will sharpen it for you for a nominal charge. These tungsten carbide adapters are currently available for lie nelson block planes, but we will soon come up with veryisoa nd stanley as well. we developed these blades specifically to ease the process for gaiatoe, but they are phenomenal for any block plane application, including hard ebony.

Custom GaiaTone sanding blocks that are fitted specifically for the top curve are also available for less than $10 dollars and are reusable. You can order these off this website.

The board is shipped flat on the bottom, but if you need to re-flatten a board, use a standard planer or a planer-joiner.

The ends of the board can also be smoothed or adjusted with files and sandpaper.

If you want to shorten the board, a coping saw, bandsaw or disk sander works fine. Do not use a fine, high-end, woodworking saw.

A note on glue. GaiaTone is effectively glued in place using traditional hide glues used with standard ebony. No alternative glue is required, although we do suggest warming the fingerboard surface with a hairdryer prior to applying the glue.

You’ll save time and money. You'll also be saving a precious resource, ebony, while enhancing your customer’s experience.