Official Luthiers Forum!

Ah yes heat and hot water is very much over rated when one can have TAS instead...

Hesh,
I believe that Steve already owns the tool in question and asks if he should keep it. Is it vital to building an instrument? Not at all, but then there are alternatives to nearly every tool. I do not know of one which will produce a dead flat face rather effortlessly besides a jointer.
Some offered their opinions on uses for this machine, while others had no need for one.
I offered 3 uses for this specifcally for luthiery.
There have been numerous threads regarding the joining of plates, and many folks struggled with many methods, but a properly set up jointer makes this task quick,simple and perfect.
Is it not imperative to have the FB side of the neck dead flat before assembly? Again the jointer makes this job simple.
I would not consider running any board through a saw until I had a jointed side to work with.
Sure, a lot of us come from woodworking backgrounds, and because of that likely have insight and experience into working with wood that only comes with years of time in the shop. Ultimately the instrument is a woodworking project and until we make them from other materials they will continue to be.
I have enjoyed many hours on this and other forums reading of builders problems,solutions and successes, and try when I can to offer advice gained from my experiences regarding woodcraft.
I try to absorb all the incredible information available here regarding the complexity of the guitar and its construction, but to state that jointer has no purpose would be incorrect.
Of course we can do without but we could do without a router for binding a just use a gramil and chisel.
I too savour the use of numerous hand planes because each one is so aptly suited for its intended task,
but when I have at hand a machine which simplifies and likely improves results......?
I feel as though I need to apologize for being a carpenter wanting to build the best way I can and continue improving through experience.
My first was likely a GSO but I've really come to enjoy the sense of accomplishment as each succesive build improves.

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My memory is so good, sometimes I remember things that never happened.

Sheesh guys, I didn't expect this to get so controversial. I started this thread to poke fun at myself because I never met a tool I don't want to keep and to get some honest commentary. I've got the honest comments and they are much appreciated. I've made my living at various times as a framer, finish carpenter, and cabinetmaker so I'm well aware of the utility of the tool. The only place I think I'll miss it is when resawing if I don't have a flat side to start with. I resaw rarely so I can accept the disadvantage there.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Thanks for that Bri and you and I will just have to disagree here and that's fine with me and likely with you too I suspect but you are the best judge of this from your point of view. You believe that guitar building is ultimately a woodworking project and I disagree believing that guitar building is ultimately building tools for musicians.... Are we saying the same thing here in different ways - not in my opinion and this point is super important to me.

Guitars are, unless you want them hung on the wall..., ultimately a tool for a musician and at some point have to be playable and desirable to play. The woodworking has lots of choices and many of us who have produced lots of guitars never used a jointer and likely never will. Is a jointer a useful tool - sure, no argument there. Is it required - hell no and I'll stand by this answer until the day I stop strumming...

It took me back a bit your statement about apologizing for being a woodworker because that's not my intent by any means to have folks feeling like this. Granted this is the Official "Luthiers" forum and not the Official "Woodworkers" or "Jointer Owners" forum but being a woodworker is very much of value and something most of you can connect with.

For me though I never gave two craps about learning to do the woodworking. I wanted from day one to produce great guitars and the woodworking was simply ONE on the important vehicles to get me there. There are others such as understanding the principals of mechanical accuracy, physics, science in general as it applies to lots of things such as RH, etc., economics, is there money in this venture or what's it going to cost me... etc. Woodworking is important sure, no argument from me but I will argue that understanding how guitars work, what players demand and require, is every bit as important as the woodworking.

I'll tell you what Bri - I won't apologize for being a Luthier and you don't ever need to apologize for being a woodworker? Thanks for your comments they tell me that I am touching a nerve here with the point that Lutherie is not ONLY woodworking and that's exactly what I am intending to do.

With this said the entire point of my rants regarding what guitars ultimately are is to get folks thinking about what is needed when the woodworking is finished and you want someone to love, covet, play, purchase, adore, bond with, value.... etc. one of your creations. They will have to play very well and sound great too and for some of us this always was every bit as important as a glue line.....

As someone who did my own thing never marketing my stuff even though my original field is marketing... we can turn a blind eye to what the market may demand and do our own things. But ultimately guitars are not purchased by folks seeking the results of someone else's woodworking project.... Guitars are purchased by players and players wanna play on and on and on.....

No problem Steve this is an important point and something that you could almost say I was trolling for this kind of response. The question here is in the context of your jointer... what the hell is a guitar anyway a woodworking project or a tool for a musician. Add the "ultimately" word and that's where the passion shows.

My vested interest in this subject is not having to tell the owner of a $5K small Luthier built instrument that is only 4 years old that their guitar is likely toast unless they want to pay be a sizable percentage of the original purchase cost of the instrument to reset the neck and redo the fret work and get the bridge back on... There are lots of woodworkers who go ugly early selling instruments and for big bucks too and ultimately the satisfaction level or lack of same can be both telling and sad as well. These folks who purchased these instruments go back to major manufacture, f*ctory instruments and the small builders who do consider the musical instrument considerations and not just the woodworking have their market forever harmed as folks drop out favoring the security of a major manufacturer warranty.

We see it all of the time, inferior built instruments that were viewed as woodworking projects making important considerations such as neck angles a consideration that was not addressed properly degrading the value of the instrument.

Sure lots of folks are here to have fun, me too, but I will always believe that you can still have fun AND produce things that actually represent real value in all respects for folks including yourself. To do this with Lutherie we MUST understand that ultimately guitars are tools for musicians and what this means to the players.

So Steve you trouble maker you.....

Steve, Sorry for the hijack.
Hesh I am going to have to disagree on the luthier/ woodworker issue. Luthiery is a arm of woodwork.
While some woodwork may be considered art if its only function is to please the eye, my personal philosophy dictates that form must follow function.
Maybe its a matter of semantics, but I could use your argument and apply it to many items.
What about doors? If I do not construct the door properly it may not function as intended. If I dont take into account humidity it will tear itself apart. If I don't set it up properly it will be a pia to use. Properly built and set up it will be an object of purpose which will last many years and be a pleasure to operate and be asthetically and proportionately correct.
Sure, it may or may not need a reset after time, but if I do not do my job correctly it will be cast to the wayside in a short period of time.
Do I need a Jointer to accomplish this? Of course not, doors have been built for centuries without one but it does facilitate the task.
Luthiers, along with coopers, carriage makers and many others I am sure, were unique enough to earn their own moniker but they all remain woodworkers.(Well maybe not Ovation builders)
Again, sorry for the ranting hijack, I surprised myself with length of the post, but it is because of the passion I have for the craft. I still love going to work at 60.

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My memory is so good, sometimes I remember things that never happened.

Bri- no worries. My jointer question is settled so we are now free to pursue some of the finer points of philosophy as applied to the art of the luthier:)

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Sell it to your next door neighbour, on the condition that you can use it whenever you need to! Oh yeah, he also has to have beer in the fridge, at all times! That sounds like the ideal solution!

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

Hesh wrote:
"you could almost say I was trolling for this kind of response."

agreed, some love to stir the .....

Woodworker? Furniture maker? Cabinet maker? Artist? For me just humbling

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

No prob Bri we will just have to disagree.

Just finished making a nut and saddle, bone... for an all CF guitar that was/is a very nice guitar BTW and not a lick of wood and consequentially woodworking with this beast..... No chisels, no jointer, no bandsaw but nonetheless a bone nut and saddle are very much part of being a Luthier but on this one no woodworking even when it was produced. I believe even the fret board is composite as we are seeing more and more of with Martin too these days.

Woodworking is important but.... guitars will always be tools for musicians not doors, not boats, not only or simply woodworking....

I appreciate your passion for woodworking Bri but I'll match that and raise you some fret work and the physics of intonation with my passion for Lutherie being as great I'm sure. Peace!

This has been fun to read.

Hesh, correct me if I'm making a mistake. You mentioned that you don't have experience with jointers or any interest them, but believe they're unnecessary and any interest in them is deviating from keeping the goal the goal (great guitars).

It seems that in order to make this claim, it would be best if a person had experience on both sides of the ball. Hesh, you've made the same arguments Bri is making in favor of jointers (efficiency) in favor of the awesome saddle slotting tool you guys developed. I have to believe it took David a lot more time and energy to invent that than it would for a typical person to set-up and learn the jointer, and in the end, they both serve the same purpose of doing a job that could be done a number of other ways more efficiently.

Anyway, nothing personal towards either of you. This seems like more of an ontological conversation than anything else, and really enjoyable.

I have had jointers in several shops I've worked in, and in the last twenty years I can recall twice that I've used them (once for a bookshelf project, the other time for canoe paddles).

If I were building solid body guitars from scratch, I'd probably have one. If I had unless noted space and wanted one around for the rare occasion it might be handy for other things, then I might keep one around. If space is limited though, that would be the first thing I'd get rid of.

If you're building in high volume or processing a lot of raw wood, of course it can be an important tool. Then again, even 20 years ago when I was building 50 guitars a year, I never used one, and can't say I ever missed having one. Everyone's needs and processes are different of course, but for me a jointer is just such a rarely used tool that there's no way I could justify it taking up any space. For the once every few years it may come in handy, I have a few local friends with jointers in their shops, and giving them a case of beer or bottle of wine for the occasional use makes much more sense to me than having one take up any space in our shop.

* - James, of course the bridge mill did take a lot of time and investment, but that's kind of comparing apples and horses. First, it doesn't take up much space, so that main concern is moot. Second, there is no other tool or method out there capable of doing what it does. If there is any simpler or cheaper way to accomplish a task with similar efficiency, accuracy, and reliability, I'll jump on it. In this case, there simply wasn't. Necessity governs most of our choices, so regarding the issue at hand of jointers, it really just comes down to whether the necessity is there in the work one does in their shop to justify the cost (which in this case is largely centered on use of space).

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

Us modern guitarmakers have a wonderful advantage over the craftsmen of past centuries.

If we don't want to purchase a jointer, or even a handplane, we can simply order a prepared, dimensioned and surfaced neck blank from a luthiery supplier...











... A luthiery supplier who uses a jointer

Now that's a good idea! The house next door is for sale so it could happen.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

You know, though? I've always bought prepared neck blanks (from a couple of good, respected sources), and except for the first one, I've always needed to square them up, and would have used a jointer if I had one. Now that first one probably wasn't square either, but I didn't know enough to check then! I'm guessing the wood is milled from larger pieces, and tends to move a little as it seasons more or from stresses being released. I'm just guessing at the 'why' , but they have all had a little warp in them, but were stable after squaring and using.
Mike

Very true and true of my experience also - I was just being a little facetious as this discussion seemed in danger of heading off into the weeds

I guess the point I was really making was that different requirements dictate what tools and processes are used. The big luthiery supplier was my example, as they have the requirement of preparing a large number of neck blanks for sale in an environment where time is money.

The presence of otherwise of a jointer in any particular shop does not necessarily have any bearing on the quality of instruments produced. It's just a tool for surfacing and truing lumber.

If you need to get some lumber straight as part of your build process, then you can pick whichever tool or process best suits you. You will either end up straight (within a given tolerance) or you will not.

Right now I use handplanes exclusively but a jointer is on its way. Why? Because I see a time-saving on some milling processes, and a money-saving in terms of purchasing rough-sawn lumber that requires these milling processes. And time and money are things I always seem to be short on.

Life just wouldn't be worth living without my baby:

Now that's a jointer. About the size of half my shop

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Nice... I must admit, much as I don't need anything like that, if I had a big outbuilding with a bunch of space to spare, I'd fill it with tools like that and find a reason to use them.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

I like your style

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My memory is so good, sometimes I remember things that never happened.

There's no rolling that baby into the corner when not in use!

For those of us who use their jointers on a daily basis for non-guitar tasks, they will more likely use it for guitar related tasks, when the needs arise. Need to put a taper on a board? If you've used a jointer enough, you'll do it on the jointer instead of table saw and jig, or any number of other tools.
I total get that there are many who don't need or want one. There's no right or wrong, as usual, just preference.

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

Good argument and no offense taken. I had access to a jointer for years in that we had one, a Stinka.... and never used it or wanted to use it and it never stopped me from building guitars. That would not qualify as no experience with a jointer since we had one to use but would qualify in my book as no desire to have any experience with something that I did not deem necessary to get to the true goal for me here which was never woodworking.... it was always Lutherie. That's my point that the only involvement in woodworking for me by my own preferences was to get me to the real goal which was always Lutherie.

This has never been about a new bandsaw or using this species of wood that I had in the shop for me. It was from day one about producing killer guitars. This of course was not everyone's approach and I respect that too.

I forgot to add that in our shop a week does not go by that we don't have an application for the a Collin's Saddle Mill and use one of ours. Years go by with no applications for jointers and we service over 1,100 instruments annually. This is our reality, not speculation, not wishful thinking, it's reality for us in a busy commercial Lutherie business.

No worries about this going in the weeds or at least I won't take us there. Bri and I have been PMing and are doing fine.

My point is though that even though many of you are woodworkers and come at Lutherie from that direction woodworking and Lutherie though related are not the same thing.

When I started doing repairs a week could go by without a use for a chisel.... Years go by without a use for a jointer...... The real, commercial world of Lutherie is VERY different for what we tool-up to do in our home shops. That's all I am suggesting here along with the notion that when the woodworking is done we still need to turn the things into musical instruments, fretting, geometry of final neck angle, bone nuts and saddle, understanding the physics of how a guitar works, etc.

We may be in violent agreement and not know it...

No disrespect to woodworkers intended, ever.... some of my best friends are woodworkers..... and I understand that you guys are your own unique style of PIA.... and have subsequently earned my respect for this! Trolling again Hesh? Yep! Hey I even made a bird house once, took me a week to do.....