Official Luthiers Forum!

hi every one........im having real problems finding a workshop here in scotland thats affordable.......or suitable for that matter.........so how much are you guys roughly paying on monthly rent for your shops?......im finding hard to find anything under £370 british pounds or $626 us dollars per month .........at the moment im working in my garage and im selling around 15 steel strings a year....but i know if i could get more space my productivity and quality would rise but the high price of rent and everything else that goes with it is stopping me from expanding.........so maybe im looking at the wrong types of places....?????.....thanks....joe kelly

I would bet with very few exceptions, most of us here build at home in a controlled environment .....

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

Howdy Joe,

What Tony said! I personally have no rent or mortgage since my property is paid for. I'm not sure how things work out in the UK but if you must expand would it not be more cost efficient to have a mortgage rather than rent? This way you would be building equity and if taxation is similar to that of the US you would have more deductions than just a rental. Congrats on your need to expand.

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Bill Hodge


One does not simply, own enough guitars!

Hi Joe,

It is difficult to compare rental costs, even converted to the all mighty dollar as regional economies can make a difference as well. But where I live, about 500 km past the middle of no where, even $650 for a space large enough for a guitar making shop would be a deal. I own 45 acres so I will be setting up everything on property for reasons mentioned above, equity, taxation etc, but more importantly, security. I have so many specialized tools and because I conduct part of my business out side (sawmill, tractors...etc) I want control on how things are laid out and stored. Really what you need to do is some simple math. So you will be adding rent and an entirely separate electric and heating bill to your business model. Will you be able to increase production significantly enough that these costs and more will be covered? And is your market for your guitars willing to accept that increased production. Once you have examined these issues then your choice should be simple. By the way, if that same space was in down town Vancouver or somewhere like that it would probably be in $2-3000 per month range. Here, about $8-1200. For something in the 1500 sq ft area.

Shane

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Canada

My shop is at home, so it's "buried" in the monthly mortgage payment. It's about 800 square feet, half conditioned, half not.

A suggestion...depending on the zoning laws used in England to control housing usage/development, you might think of getting a used sea container. These come in various sizes, but generally 8 feet or so wide by at least 7.5 feet tall and whatever length. Since they are "monocoque", no "foundation" is needed...just set level on a good bed of gravel for drainage. They can be insulated and paneled, then run surface electrical conduit for power distribution. They are steel so virtually impregnable, short of a cutting torch!
With a good layout, you could have a very nice shop, or two, depending on how and what you desire, including a finish booth in a corner and workstations along the walls. Would lend itself nicely to a "flow through" build process.

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Hank Mauel

I work from home in a converted utility room the size of a single garage. I also have an undercover outside space where I can happily sand no matter what the weather (guitars are stored in a humidity controlled environment BTW) and not worry about dust floating through the rest of the house. Sometimes the guitars find themselves into the kitchen - especially during finishing because it is a very clean room.

Renting space is incredibly expensive in the UK - and you would likely see the price of your guitars go up to to match the overheads!!!

Up to 2k, you can buy yourself a 3m x 4m formidible wooden cabin kit you can construct in your garden - these kits also allow for insulation, etc, and if you got a loan, you may be able to get electrics fitted - use your main room as a large powertool, heavy woodworking space, and the cabin as a fine woodworking space/glueing, etc. The sale of your guitars should soon pay it off, and if you are properly self employed.....(tax...)

Even this workshop kit for 1k could be a consideration, 3m x 5m approx
http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.203-5034.aspx

Hank's suggestion is a great one about the shipping container - just paint it a discreet colour so the neighbours won't complain!!

I do my thing at home in a basement shop. It is cramped and hard to keep at a proper humidity level. I have everything on wheels to push to side for when i don't need it. I have thought of renting a nice garrage/shop somewhere but the properties in my area have drastically risen over the past few years and it would cost me about a $1000.00 minimum for an small/average size garage/shop. So i guess i'm stuck here.

I have a 24 by 40 2 floor shop. I pay $1500 a month

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

My guitar building shares space with my full time woodworking day job.

My shop is on my own property exactly for the reasons stated above, the high cost of renting commercial woodworking space. If I had to pay the rates asked, I'd close the doors and walk away. There is no way that I could charge enough, or put through enough product, to have anything left at the end of the day. The object of work is to have enough money to live on, including supporting the family. If I'm doing all that work and not getting the money, why bother?

My shop is a converted double garage, 24' x 24', with a 28' x 30' fabric building for storage. If the shop was dedicated to just the guitars, I could get a lot of them going.

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Expectation is the source of all misery; comparison the thief of joy.
http://redrivercanoe.ca/

This doesn't help with your question, but one thing I've been thinking of doing is to make "modular" types of jigs or setups. i.e. the jig or whatever lives on a 2' square piece of plywood that clamps to the bench. Multiple setups would go on a simple shelf designed to hold a number of these things to save space when they're not in use. Bigger ones like buffers or whatever could hang from the ceiling.

In general, spending some time thinking about your process and physical work flow throughout the shop can speed things up and make the most of a small area and limited time, even in an only semi production environment.

Start by writing down the major steps and deciding which ones you'll do in batches and where you'll store the finished parts. e.g. one famous luthier joints all of his tops and backs as soon as he cuts them. They're thicknessed later but they dry already jointed.

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

thanks for all the replies everyone......lots of helpful info......im kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place at the moment.......i would like to make guitar making my job but i struggle to make more than fifteen instruments a year......i use mostly hand tools and not many jigs......i really dont enjoy semi production work so i make just one at a time and spray them and by the time that one finished another one is ready for finishing.......i tried making 3,4,5 at a time and i just felt like giving up.......my tiny workshop has just enough space to make one at a time.......so i will just stick to what im doing now for the time being.....one at a time and hope i become skilled enough one day to pull in the big bucks

ive also got round to making my self a guitar......finally......the b&s are coco from lmi

I've got 1000 square feet, 50'x20', and I put a second floor over the right half of it (10'x50') as there is a 20' ceiling and I could use the extra storage space. It costs me around $900/mo for rent and another $100 for required insurance. Rent might be a bit higher here due to the (significant) costs of snow removal being part of my rent.

I'd like to put the shop behind a house someday, but I need to get a house first and on top of that I'll need to get one close enough to proper power-company hardware that I can get 3-phase power hooked up affordably.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Have you looked into phase converters?

Something like this, found randomly with google.

http://www.acephaseconverter.com/

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Expectation is the source of all misery; comparison the thief of joy.
http://redrivercanoe.ca/

A buddy of mine uses one for his Fadal as he lives in the mountains and is lucky enough to get power at all

They do eat up more juice and cost a lot more to run than if you have 3Ph power installed, though. There are decent odds that, if the chance presents itself, the cost analysis might show that the extra power cost is lower than the rent savings and so it'd still be a good idea fiscally. There are some houses around here that aren't very far from some serious industry places, so I'm hoping that some of them have pretty good access to 3Ph power.

Power is actually secondary for me, though. Goal #1 is moving somewhere that I can eject my dust from the shop rather than collecting it inside; that way there's no secondary dust escaping back into the shop through the filters. The amount of wood dust I produce (and a stove) should offset the heat loss handily

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

A VFD (variable frequency drive) might be an alternative to a phase converter in some cases.
It offers the advantage of variable speed and reversing but that is not always needed.
Another issue is that machines designed with 3-phase use a stepdown transformer for control voltage(s).