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For those who builds a larger number of guitars a year, what can a one man shop do to improve throughput?

I find that if I work at a somewhat feverous pace I can possibly make 10 guitars a year, but realistically I don't think I can manage even 5 a year. Feels like every step of the way just takes a large amount of time, from neck carving, to brace carving, voicing, thicknessing, etc.

What kind of machines should I get that could really improve the efficiency of my work, so if I have to make 20 guitars in one year, it would be realistic?

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Not personally, but a builder I took a course from was putting through about 20-24/year, 5 day week, yearly holiday, and gave 3 x 2 week courses (4 places).
It was a very big shop with large, quality machinery.
It's a few years, but as I recall he had at least - bandsaw, belt sander/linisher, fretboard radius jig, jointer, table saw (with spindle moulder), dual wide belt drum sander. 4 benches, 4 drill presses (one for fret pressing), home built 4 way routing station with vacuum holder, a router for every operation, vacuum press for bracing, large spray booth, cantilever binding jig, motorised radius sander, dual side bender, built in extraction system, and a jig for everything except neck carving (which he was organizing), climate control, and a large buffing machine. Probably forgotten somethings.
He worked on 3 instruments at a time.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Drill press for fret pressing? I thought for a dedicated machine an arbor press would have served better...

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

At that rate of output, what's to complain about?
I will mention it was probably 50 years old, a very heavy bit of kit, dedicated to fret pressing.
P.S. But I can always PM you his number so you can tell him how he's doing it wrong.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Either would work fine. I have a number of arbor presses, hydraulic presses, etc. but I still find myself using a mill to do a lot of the pressing I do in my machine shop. If it works, it works!

I can't speak to guitars since I am on my first, but I do know a lot about building for production. I have a degree in Industrial Design (product design).

As with any product you need to standardize and automate. So instead of making one thing at a time you need to scale it up and make 20 of them. What ever you can standardize things like heel blocks, braces and bridges or where ever else you can use the same part then set your inventory numbers and build that many of them at one time. Jigs and fixtures aid in production so figure the most efficient way to do something and build a jig to aid you. Once you have an inventory of parts you can then concentrate on the aspects that are not the same and put you efforts there instead of spending time making the same part over and over by hand.

The other way would be to add more people but that usually costs a lot more than automation, even on a small scale.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

Cheers,
Bob

Some things you can do to improve productivity:
Focus your efforts on producing a single style of instrument with a limited number of models (trim levels).
Jig up for the production of that particular instrument.
Make or buy (whichever is more cost effective) components ( Linings, blocks, neck blanks, etc.) for a number of instruments at one time to save "set up" time.
Don't take on projects that interfere with "production". This can be difficult for a shop that also does repairs.

To improve "throughput" you will also have to find someone who will buy your stuff as you produce it, and keep inventory from building up.

It might be reasonable for a shop to produce 10 -12 hand built instruments a year by working efficiently within the workflow of a repair shop, but some full time guitar makers don't produce 20 instruments a year.

Rusbob has got the idea. In my hey day I was making about a dozen a year, did that for almost 3 years. Now I make one a year if that but that's another story...

Once you set up your jigs for any given task say a simple one like joining tops. Do several of them. I had a small shop but it still worked out ok. I had three benches in the shop one dedicated to each guitar with the spare for repairs and other stuff. So I always built two at a time with parts like necks and linings and blocks etc... waiting ready to just grab when I needed it.

Machines like a drum sander are a huge time saver and imo a band saw is a must.

You should be able to make 12 Guitars per year using hand tools alone. It's not that difficult. Power tools will shave off a bit more time but don't fall into the trap of thinking that they will suddenly transform everything. The first thing to identify are the tasks that you think are taking far too long. That's why it's a good idea to time yourself at each and every task. Once you have done that you can start to think about methods/techniques that will make things go quicker. Making things in batches (as opposed to one offs) should save you a LOT of time. Just analyse every aspect of construction, start to finish.
Here's an example from my own time sheet. French Polishing takes me 10 hours in total, including Pore filling. There's not a lot I can do to get that down. However, if I brush the finish on (shellac or Oil) I almost half the time, it's down to 6 hours. That's quite a considerable saving on just one aspect of making a Guitar. Every couple of years I make a junk wood Guitar. These nearly always involve a few new methods/ideas that I've thought about. Sometimes they work, quite often they fail. I always learn something from them. The last one took me 45 hours work in total. No router, no sander and I didn't even use the Bandsaw. Of course I could go at it without fear of making a mistake, it was a more of an exercise. It's a good way to get quick though.

It may not be one thing, but the some total time saving of all the little things, jigs, fixtures etc. I made 16 guitars in 2012, my apprentice and I made 35 last year, (outside our day jobs), and I hope to do 100 this year. Once you have all the things made that you need to make all the things, you can stop making things that aren't the actual guitars.

I build electrics. I tried to build three at once to shorten tool setup time.
I found myself rushing and doing a crummy job.
I'm logging my time on my current build to get a handle on what processes can be improved and shortened.
I build as a hobby, so I don't have a quota to meet.
Interesting topic, thanks Tai.
Dan

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

It can be very helpful to know how much time you put into making a guitar and exactly how much time goes into every operation. Than you can start to see where your time is going and which operations you can improve on.

I just moved into a new shop a few months ago and am in the process of figuring out how I will set it up. In the past I have built between 12-18 guitars most years. I'm aiming for 30 per year in the new shop, while continuing to make the jigs I offer through CLS. I figured out that I put an average of 50 working hours into a guitar. I hope that with some more jigs and tooling I can get that down to close to 40 hours per instrument. Based on my numbers 30 instruments per year should be doable. There have been lots of good suggestions in this thread. For a few years I have been working to standardize as much as I can between my models. This way I can make parts in large batches. I am also working on designing dedicated work stations in my shop for the different major operations of building (assembly station, binding station, neck station, etc...). In order to do all these things you need space. And like someone else mentioned, you also need to know you have people who will buy your instruments. But putting even a few of the ideas mentioned in this thread into practice should help anyone become more efficient in their building.

Josh

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Josh House

Canadian Luthier Supply
http://www.canadianluthiersupply.com
https://www.facebook.com/canadianluthiersupply?ref=hl
House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
http://www.houseguitars.com

Reading the other posts I realized I forgot to mention when talking about the builder who gave my course - he did batch up/or buy repetitive stuff like sized brace blanks, neck and tail blocks, linings (I just made 12 sets) neck blanks, rosettes, bindings, purflings etc..
Having them to hand immediately makes the work flow much more smoothly compared to producing bits for one guitar at a time, as well cutting production time per unit.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Bob, your reply reminds me so much of a past life. Our line rate in the assembly room had to be taken into consideration with EVERY SINGLE THING WE DID! That put a 7-1/2 second clock in my head, that to this day I think of with everything I do. Basically, any operation could not take more than 7-1/2 seconds, or if that was not possible, then no less than 15 seconds, where you split the line and did two at once. And this of course backed up into all the parts made to go into our product, which had to at least meet if not exceed that rate, actually faster to account for scrap. So the trick was to break everything down into multiple operations that would each meet that rate. Either that or do lots of them at the same time.

Yep, 7-1/2 seconds per operation. Don't think that will work for guitars, but it sure does put things in perspective some times.

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Phil

http://www.oleninstruments.com

"Those who tilt at windmills are only considered insane by those who can't see the dragon."

Hi Tai Fu,
I don't build a lot of guitars per year-about 6 in my "spare" time,but since I don't have as much time as I wish I try to make it count.

I find that if I rethink every operation and try something different than I had been doing I can usually increase my efficiency.

For example I used to attach the 4 back braces to the back in a rectangular shape then carve the triangular profile then scallop the ends, then sand them. It probably took me about 45 minutes.

Now I "carve" them on my 6 X 89 sander and scallop the ends on a simple jig on the drum of the same sander.
The total operation takes about 15 minutes. I actually like the way they come out better than before,so I feel it is an improvement in the quality of the finished product.

Obviously if you can do that to even half the operations in a guitar you can cut your time greatly.

I built 60 guitars the "old" way so at first it seemed weird, but soon enough it became second nature and I don't even think about it I just do it.

Regards,
Brad