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I'll keep this short and sweet.

5 years ago I built a guitar under the guidance of an experienced luthier.
I haven't built since and am desperately looking to get back into it.
I'm basically no need of a little guidance on how to get started on my own. I have a space to start up. I just need to insulate and such.

What am I gonna need? Tools jigs etc.

Any guidance is much appreciated.

Thanks in advance and it's good to be back.

Geet: Nice to see you....! Hope the "such" in your quote includes RH control and good lighting. Some form of dust control but that can be put on the to do list for down the road. For RH control I use a humidifier and dehumidifier set so that my shop stays very close to 40 %. You should include accurate RH measurement gauges. Good luck in the adventure.
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

Jonathan,
Glad to see someone from my home area on this board. FYI, I'm from Whitesboro originally. I worked for a couple of years at Griffiss, and had and have friends still in Rome. If you're familiar with the band Tyler, Patty is an old friend from my neighborhood and they play at the Snubbing Post with some regularity.
So if I can help with any advice etc., happy to do so. What kind of guitars are you planning on building?
So let's look at some basic hand tools and power tools:
Chisels
Planes
Clamps - lots of them.
Stew Mac has a lot of great fretting tools and fret wire.
I find that my table saw, bandsaw, drill press, and thickness sander are the mainstays in my shop. I also have an edge sander which I should add to that list.
Most important is proper dust collection and air filtration. Your health is paramount to being able to enjoy the hobby or even the business of lutherie, so don't skimp on those things. Get a good dust collector if you have power tools, especially any kind of sanders like I listed.
Tom's suggestions for humidity control are not to be too lightly considered. It's a necessity, especially if you're wanting to do acoustic insrtuments.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Each time I build a guitar I think of the tool that would have made the last one easier. I'm at 16 now and slowly acquiring a real shop.

What you need is all relative to what you want to do and how you want to do it. However, I would say a good place to start is a chisel, 1/2 - 1 inch, a smoothing plane and a way to sharpen them very well.

Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

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Pat

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My Facebook Guitar Page

"There's really no wrong way, as long as the results are what's desired." Charles Fox

"We have to constantly remind ourselves what we're doing....No Luthier is putting a man on the moon!" Harry Fleishman

"Generosity is always different in the eye of the person who didn't receive anything, but who wanted some." Waddy Thomson

It's been a while but you have built one so you have number one under your belt. Get your shop in order and start building is my advice. You have already had some guidance which is a blessing so now it's time to expand on that and learn by doing.

Thank you all so much for the responses. I'm extremely excited to get back to building and creating wonderful sounding acoustic instruments again

For me - my list of specialized things is pretty short.
Molds and bending forms (home made)
Bending blanket
Radius dishes
Router base for binding work
Circle cutting router base (home made)
Fretwire bender
Binding router bit set.
Precision straight edge

"Normal stuff"
Planes, card scrapers, chisels, drill and Forstner bits, laminate trimmer router, good sanding blocks, sharpening stuff, combination square, good rulers, tape measure, Japanese pull saw, fine razor saw, x-acto knife, lots and lots of clamps...

Special stuff I love
14" band saw
Drum thickness sander
Dust collector

I know a guy who built a guitar in a re-education camp with only half of a butter knife and scrap materials that were laying around. I'm glad I have more to work with! Here are some of my most used hand tools.

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Pat