Official Luthiers Forum!

Possible but not practical.

[am I being too brief again?]

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

I imagine it is hard for a beginning woodworker to get any perspective on this issue, as there is a constant focus on high-end hand tools, exotic woods, and cabinetshop machinery. Several excellent comments have already been made here, but for what its worth, here are a few more:

My father was a regionally admired cabinetmaker and instrument maker who worked for decades with a 12" Sears Craftsman bandsaw that he bought in the early 1930s - his only bandsaw. He had a large shop, but did not see the need to resaw instrument wood himself. For a beginning guitarmaker, I believe it is not cost-effective to resaw your own wood, as the prices on the pre-sawn "lower esthetic" grades are pretty cheap.

Though he had several handplanes, the Stanley #60 block plane was the only one I ever saw him use. You can do everything you need to do on a guitar with one similar plane, and you would develop good skills in doing so. However, I do recommend a cleaned up old #5 also, to make life a bit easier in jointing.

His chisels were good ones, but not expensive for the time in which he bought them. Modern woodworkers might laugh at the stones he used for sharpening.

Todd and others have emphasized this in various ways, but it bears repeating in capital letters: YOUR MOST IMPORTANT TOOL IS YOUR SHARPENING SKILL. This is far more important than worrying about whether to buy a Blue Spruce or a handmade Japanese or a Lie-Nielsen or a Sears can opener. The sharpness that a new tool is shipped out with is TOTALLY UNIMPORTANT. If you can't sharpen an edged tool enough to shave your arm, then it is pointless who made it.

If you can sharpen your tools well, you need to know that the guitarmaking process is not otherwise very demanding on your tools. First, and not to be underestimated, is that there is not a lot of surface area on a guitar, as opposed to say a bed or chest of drawers. Secondly, guitarmaking does not involve much complex joint-making. In fact there is only one "complex" joint on a guitar, the neck-body intersection. The rest is all simple butt and lap joints that do not require the visible precision requirements of furniture dovetails or mortise-and-tenon. You glue two pieces of wood together and sand or scrape them flush.

Buy the Nickelson #49 or #50 rasp for less than half the price of the Auriou or TBT, and you will love it. And yes I have owned all of the above and more.

If you really must resaw something, look for a cabinetmaker or luther that is willing to do it for you, for a fee. In an hour, you can get more wood re-sawn than you will use in a year. Same with wide-belt sanding, if you want to keep the hand planing to a minimum.

You will not do better work with an expensive modern boutique chisel or plane than with a well prepared and sharpened older tool from ebay or the flea market. Don't get me wrong, I have owned some of these lovely modern tools, and they are very well made. But you can set up a 70 year old garage sale plane to take the same .0015" shaving that you get with the Lee-Nielsen. On a scale of tool desirability, sometimes its hard to tell where functional tool quality levels off and and mystical beliefs and/or self-image begins. I am not saying there is anything wrong with that by the way.

Brook

I think it was that tutorial that made me consider the WFRET program and I have downloaded it. I am certainly the type who will want to do something like that in the future. I think you can get the handsaw and miterbox for about $25, so I guess I don't have to shell out $85, and of course, being able to use other woods that I may already have on hand makes that appealing and would fall under the heading of low budget luthery.



True, but for me it was a matter of initially wanting to get some of the processes done at least once without worrying about messing up some very nice materials. I agree that in the long run, one will spend a fair amount of money to make quality instruments out of quality materials. It certainly isn't practical for professional builders to spend inordinate amounts of time fussing with a mickey mouse tool when there may be something that speeds production or improves accuracy to the point that its usefullness exceeds its cost. For a builder who is going to charge $3500 or more for a guitar to spend the time searching for a way to make a fret tang nipper so they can save $35, vs buying one from StewMac, vs spending an hour filing the tangs doesnt make a lot of sense. The hours they save can add up over the year to another instrument. For me the joy is in making the tool and saving the $35.

I thank everyone for their input! I am not really an amateur woodworker, just amateur luthier. I have most tools needed, although some inadequate. I would rather spend my miniscule budget on tools that i will use over and over again, than spend it on wood that i may screw up. acquisition of hardwood should not be much problem for the first few instruments, but top wood seems to be much harder to find(locally and cheap/free). I have already accepted needing to purchase, at the very least, lower grade top wood. I don't plan on spending $ on jigs and such, as i find pleasure in anything i can make myself. Time is not of huge concern YET. I am not rushing on any instrument, but I expect to have an efficient building process at some point. I do not like to waste setup time, so eventually i will build more than one instrument at once. When I have been better off financially in the past, i got in the habit of wasteful spending. I can't do that anymore, so purchases must be necessary.

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It is better to try and fail, than never try at all

I started out building dulcimers on a table in the bedroom of my apartment. Since then I've done a lot more work with hand than power tools. I've got a shop full of stuff, but the 90-10 rule holds: you do 90% of the work with 10% of your tools.

You don't need most of the stuff on the market. I've done all of my joining with the same #4-1/2 Record plane for more than thirty years. Once you tune a plane up, it stays tuned. I've done all of my fretting with a claw hammer and a wood block. In a pinch I do binding routs with a marking gauge, chisel and file. It takes some time, but there's no loss of accuracy. One thing you find out is that hand tools can be very quick, once you learn to use them.

And once you learn to sharpen them. You can't do accurate work with dull tools, and that's the only kind of work that's good enough for lutherie. You're never really in control of a dull tool, and that goes just as strongly for power tools as hand tools.

The first things I'd buy that plug in would be a heat blanket and a router. With the router you can make all the jigs you could want. A 'horse collar' jig and a bending form will do more to improve your speed and accuracy than almost anything else, and you can make them in a day. After those I'd go for a small table-top drill press.

A go-bar deck goes a long way toward filling up the clamp requirements. It can be as simple as a piece of plywood screwed to the ceiling over your bench.

C&Ns 'popsicle stick trick' for cutting out a rosette channel works perfectly. Just because it looks crude doesn't mean it is.

My first fret saw was a hacksaw blade with the teeth ground down.

My favorite chisel is one I ground out of a rusty Nicholson 6" double extra slim three-square file that I got at a yard sale. Great steel, and it's lasted me more than thirty years.

One of the great things about lutherie is that there's so much you can learn.
Use this time to learn real hand-tool chops, and you'll be that much better a maker when you can afford the power tools. Maybe you'll even decide you don't want or need them!