Official Luthiers Forum!

I don't want to beat a dead horse and I also don't want to offend anyone -- but I'm not sure how such a clear cut topic seems to have so many differing opinions.

The term "handmade" is a clearly defined term in the English language. If one is to be semantically correct, the term only refers to objects made with hand tools. Hand tools are also defined as tools held in the hand and operated by human power only (no electricity or other source of energy). Thanks to marketing and significant leaps in the technology and tools used by the modern woodworker and other crafts -- the term "handmade" is often applied incorrectly by many. I constantly hear folks use the word "irony" or "ironic" wrong -- just because people use the word incorrectly doesn't change the standard definition. Certain words due change their meaning over time but in this case, I don't think that applies. If a word as complex as "irony" can be universally acknowledged as having a correct meaning, then a word as simple as "handmade" and "hand tool" should also be recognized by everyone on this forum. It benefits the field of lutherie for those of us that participate in the craft to be knowledgeable, especially on fundamentals.

Building solely with hand tools doesn't make much sense for most professional builders -- some mix of power tools is almost necessary to increase efficiency. Nevertheless, building with hand tools can be enjoyable and requires a unique skill set that I don't see how anyone could consider unimportant.

I would also like to comment on CNC involvement in lutherie. I view CNC's as a whole different "craft" apart from woodworking. They involve software programming skills and knowledge of cutters, speed rates, etc... However, those things are very different from the skills used in traditional woodworking (also including power tools like routers, etc...). Nevertheless, CNC proficiency is very useful to woodworkers and should not be looked down upon.

That said, my personal view is to look at CNC work as a form of outsourcing. It is great for the manufacturing of parts but there is a magical and not clearly defined line where you can outsource too much and your guitars can become "assembled" rather than "crafted". That line is different for individual customers and individual builders. I personally feel like something is lost when the "majority" of the process no longer relies on traditional woodworking skills. But that is just my opinion and should not dictate your own path as a builder.

The true value of using CNC is to accomplish things that are impossible by hand (or at least 99% impossible).

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

Can we agree that hand made is using tools that take hand skills.
What these topics entertain is trying to make a definition fit a paradigm . I also find it entertaining that CNC fans will do that same thing. As an ex toolmaker I have used both in my career . I will take hand skills over CNC any day. I will say that some jobs are best for CNC. Jobs that can cause micro injury and repetitive motion are best for CNC. If you are CF Martin , Gibson you have to look at the productivity and repeatability of process.

_________________
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

I can certainly agree to that but I think that this is the more interesting question:

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

I can relate to this statement 100%. I bleed all over the inside of my guitars. Well...a few drops anyway.


Posted from my Toaster oven using Tapatalk

_________________
http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

Danny wrote:
" Imagine if I were the guy that actually killed the cow. Serious cred."

Well, we've been raising a steer for the last year and a half on our pasture, and he goes off to freezer camp in month or so. I'm not doing the deed myself: I draw the line at poultry for lack of facilities and expertise, but I plan on processing the bones that are suitable for nuts and saddles.

I guess you could say the same thing about 'handmade' guitars: what do you need to farm out for want of facilities and expertise? Very few of us would feel the need to make tuners more complicated than tapered pegs or maybe 'Preston patent' style lead-screw machines, and I don't know anybody who draws their own wire for strings or rolls frets. I've never seen a pit saw outside of ethnographic photos and historic reenactments. The case has been made for the use of 'serviced parts' when shop space is not available. I've gotten pearl diamonds CNC cut when it was obvious that hand cutting five hundred or so to the required tolerance just didn't make any sense. Setting up a legal spray booth for nitro is a very expensive proposition around here, so if I wanted to use that finish, outsourcing would be the only reasonable way to go. Etc., etc...

It probably doesn't matter as much to the customers as it does to me, but I take a certain pride in doing as much as I can myself. Obviously, I'm in this to make a living (which shows how out of touch with reality I am) but to just do it on the level of factory production holds no appeal either. I've done production work, thank you, and while there can be a certain charm in seeing how far you can improve the process, eventually you run into limits, if only from other workers who don't like 'rate-busting'. Every time I walk into the shop I'm challenging myself to do things better then I did them yesterday.

This challenge resolves itself down to a series of pretty mundane steps in the end: a slightly better edge on the chisel, a bit sharper understanding of where the sound comes from, a more artistic inlay, slightly tighter fit or better finish, are the daily currency. It's an example of compound interest at work, of course; you don't get ahead by leaps (especially after forty years in the business) but by slow, steady progress from year to year.

There are all sorts of ways you can improve, and many of them involve 'new' technology, either new to you or things that did not exist or were not commonly used in the past. We all use glues and finishes that were invented in the last few decades, and think little of it. The same goes for the more obvious technologies, ranging from home-shop sized thickness sanders to CNC. Any new technology can be badly used, of course (so can old technology!), and sometimes it's not obvious what the 'right' use is. Indeed, in the end, only results can justify any use of a new technology. If CNC cut parts really do work better in the multi-dimensional space of sound, looks and function that defines 'better' in our world, we'll find out in time. Meanwhile we have to explore the new territory and gain the new skills.

To me, what counts are the learning, and the fact that the product is the result of one person's vision and skill. Strad used apprentices, I have a bandsaw. In his case we recognize the hand of the master in the work of final carving and fitting. Guitar makers, for better or worse, strive to remove evidence of hand work, but there is still the signature of design and workmanship. My guitars are mine; they don't look, or sound, just like anybody else's. If I accept the blame for any deficiencies, I also hope for credit where it is due.

Finally, I recall something a student told me. He'd already built a couple of guitars from kits in other short courses before he came to work with me. He said that, inevitably, no matter how small the 'bought' piece was, it's the thing that people would ask about. When he assembled a serviced kit, his friends asked if he bent the sides. If he made everything but the rosette, invariably they'd point to that and say: "Did you make that?". You can't win...

I think we are overlooking people who are true craftsmen but for some reason do not have hands. Should they label their work, "Stumpmade in ____"? Or perhaps, "made with my prosthetic limbs but no power tools". Is it just a gray area when this happens? What if the builder has only one prosthetic arm? Would his work only be 50% hand made? I'm not saying we should discount their work because they have a bionic arm but I think the use of a bionic limb might give them an advantage.
What if Inspector Gadget built guitars? His hands can be any number of items. If he activated his Go go gadget router would it be considered his "hand" since it appears where his hand was? What if RoboCop decided to take up lutherie? Could he call his work handmade?
We need to spend several dozen pages discussing this and setting ground rules so we can quantify and define all of this!

However, I'm going to leave it to you all to do. I'm going to go build guitars, with my CNC cut bridges by the way, and call my guitars "a guitar I built" when someone asks. Then I will use my bionic arm to smash things.
Peace!

Tony


Posted from my Bionic limb using Tapatalk

_________________
http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

Here is part of what I once posted on another forum...

"There is a book by David Pye, the Art and Nature of Workmanship, that addresses this. It is a short book but deep. I am still trying to completely absorb it. He breaks things down on a scale with workmanship of certainty on one end and workmanship of risk on the other. I.e., the more tools and the more sophisticated tools you use the more you approach the workmanship of certainty end. Meaning it is harder and harder to screw up but less skill you need to make something. The fewer and less sophisticated tools you use the more you approach the workmanship of risk end. Meaning more depends on your skill than the tool and it is easier to screw up. There seems to be no clear line where an item becomes hand made. The closer you get to the workmanship of certainty end the less variation there is in the product. Things that come out of a factory are all just alike. Some factorys produce high end items and some low end but from a given factory every item is virtually identical.

By working on the workmanship of risk end there is more chance to screw up but also a good chance, depending on skill, to make a masterpiece. A masterpiece will not come from a factory.

Ervin Somogyi, in his recent book, the Responsive Guitar, makes a good case for why the craftsman is important. Every piece of wood is different. Experience tells the craftsman how much to thin the top or back or braces and where to place the braces. There is no place for that in a factory that produces thousands of guitars; no time to take into account the individual differences in the wood and make minors adjustments. There will be some really good Martins and Gibsons etc but the masterpieces will be made by the craftsman.

I get more satisfaction in doing as much as I can by hand but in defense of those guys farming out a portion of the work I would say "if" they are doing the things that make a great sounding guitar themselves based on their own skills and experience then they should be allowed to command that much for their work. I can't say whether they do or should say that the guitar is handmade.

Bottom line is how good does the guitar sound, then how good does it look. Factories are getting better and better. That is why it is getting harder and harder to make a living as a craftsman. Is it bad for the craftsman to farm out those things that don't effect the sound? I really can't say. They are just moving down the scale toward factory builds; taking less risk. As long as they are honest about what they do I don't have a problem with it."

I am in this for the craftsmanship; for the love of the wood. I will use power tools where it makes sense but will probably never go as far as using cnc mainly because i have more interest in using hand tools and more common power tools. I'll never make a living doing this but I will get a lot of satisfaction from it and have a lot of pride in what I do.

As an answer to the original post. I would say my guitars are "handmade" as opposed to "factory made".

Eddie

My website states that I make "handmade guitars", which I guess is somewhat inaccurate. Up until this point, I've never used CNC for my guitars, but I have used power tools in every step of the process. I buy lumber, I sand it with my surfaces sander, I resaw it on my bandsaw. I use power tools to aid in jointing the wood and then thicknessing it. I've always used power tools whether it be a router or a drill press for rosettes and all other components to some degree. I don't make fret wire or tuners, or bridge pins etc. I've not started to use a CNC to start to do some of that work, like profiling sides, making bridges, doing inlay work, and hopefully soon necks. In a sense, I've substituted one/several power tool(s) for another. I designed and built the CNC, although again I didn't make the electronics boards or drives or motors etc. If I make a neck on the CNC, it is used mostly to remove 95% of the excess wood, but I still have to bring it down to the final size. I can accomplish the same thing with regular power tools or with hand tools with similar confidence. The results will not look any different, which in my mind at least for me dispels any notion that one way will look more mechanical than the other. The mechanical operations are not the final operations to the wood.

In truth, I think of my work as more "custom building" than anything. I oversee every operation regardless of what tools I use. They are an extension of me whether a motor or computer drives the tool or whether my muscle does. For decades, C.F. Martin has been the standard in the acoustic guitar industry, and they have always used whatever technology was available to them. The Shakers were incredibly inventive, and anytime they could come up with a way to ease the burden of doing the work, they would.

Does any of this really matter? In truth, what matters is the perspective of whoever is buying the instruments. That is, unless you're building entirely for your own benefit, and the tactile feedback of a plane or spokeshave or chisel etc. is what makes you happy. If you're after that translucent curl of wood coming out of a plane, and pushing your skills to their highest level, then it really really matters. But if you're trying to sell a product and actually make some money on it after all your labor....

_________________
"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."

For many it clearly matters.

Why does this matter?

Are we hand worshipers?

Are we anti-industry?

_________________
I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

I think the question being asked is at root sort of irrelevant.

I build in a manner that would probably not offend most of the "handmade" advocates above, and I'm doing it for fun. I'd never buy a neck or farm one out as a CNC job, because I like carving necks as much as any part of the process.

But I don't think any of that should really matter to a buyer, if what they are after is a better instrument. The question to me is whether the individual builder provides a better or more suitable instrument, through both special attention to the properties of the components of the build and greater flexibility in design, than a factory spec guitar. If you are doing better at producing a quality result than a big factory, then there is your value, and I don't think it makes a difference whether you are doing it with hand tools or your own mini factory.

(Well, maybe that's too polemic - I like handmade things as well as anyone, but if your 100% handmade whittled with a pocketknife guitar wasn't better than a Taylor/whatever factory guitar, I sure wouldn't want to buy it.)

_________________
Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

I now have a case of luthiers guilt. But I have an idea! I'm going to rig my drum sander up to my bicycle for power and get the benefits of exercise and good health! It will be hell on my food bill though.

What about training chimpanzees to build guitars? Would they not be hand made?


What if artificial intelligence reaches the point where my robot butler can assist me in making my guitars? Would that not be hand made?


This is a real Pandora's box. Is it Pollyannaish to think we can work this out? I don't think there is any place in most people's minds for sentient robot luthiers or chimpanzee luthiers or even alien life form luthiers. But I bet those kooky aliens make some killer hand made instruments. Or whatever you call their creepy alien appendages.


It might seem like I am making light of this thread and the topic, and I am. That's because I feel it is becoming a bit separatist and elitist. As a community, we have come together to share knowledge and help everyone become the best guitar builder they can be. Or at least to become as good as they choose to be. Everyone is free to use any tools, powered, hand, CNC, that they like. The end result is supposed to be better than I can buy from Martin, Taylor or any other factory. If that is what has resulted, then I think we all win. We are all here to build guitars, right? So lets get back to that and not try to draw a line in the sand splitting this forum into "hand builders" vs. "power tool builders" vs. "CNC users".
With the amount of people who have left the forum over the years because of the bickering and petty BS, you would think people would have woken up by now and tried to keep this place as civil as possible.

Do we not all build stringed instruments? OK then, lets keep talking about that, shall we? Now if you will excuse em, I have to get back to my temple. Here is a pic of it:

_________________
http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

Yeah, it's a personal thing. To me craftmanship is about developing a skill. It is about hands and human process. Business model, machine use, premade elements, kits...... all ways to get to the same end. But craftmanship is about the process so much more than the product. I would even argue that it is entirely about the process. The quality of craftmanship is something else entirely and about the end product. So talking about a quality guitar and craftmanship in getting there are really two different things.

Zlurgh wrote:


To me that is almost exactly opposite to reality. That is missing the key element. Yes, the hands. Heart and head are ethereal things as much as the nostalgia that you mention. It IS a personal thing. For me, heart and head without hands is design. Craftmanship does not exist until what is in the heart and head or even a set of plans come through human hands. Until then it does not exist in reality. A craftsman can execute an idea, make it real.

Building almost anything and expecially a stringed instrument is a combination of designer, technician, machine operator, assembler, craftsman. We each choose to emphasize these parts differently depending on our goals.... A huge spectrum is in evidence here.... We all benefit from it.

Interesting discussion.......

_________________
Chuck Kish

So...I'm surrounded by illusions?

As I type this I am extending my arms over the non-existent thing I now seem not to have made...yet poured my heart and soul into. I knew if I stayed on this tack long enough I'd get a comment like this....which underlies, I believe, all this discussion on "hand-made" items. The "hand-made" paradigm of thought is fine as a choice....but for many it's a judgement or a rationale. I can only speculate as to what is being judged or rationalized.

I would just like you to consider that there are people that were exposed to modern tools and technology that don't have a point of reference that includes traditional methods of instrument construction. Their hands, if magic, are no less magic than traditionalists and their hearts no less pure.

_________________
I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

This discussion has taken a somewhat feisty tone, and I'm impressed it wasn't a flame war from the start.

I would argue that true craftsmanship has never changed, but the tools and methods used to achieve it have evolved and will continue to do so. There is absolutely no question in my mind that if the great masters of instrument making throughout history had access to power tools, synthetic adhesives, and CNC they would have used every last one of them. I will always enjoy having mastery with hand tools and techniques, but when it comes time to build a guitar the entire instrument is designed and constructed in CAD first (typically with the exception of complex contours that I like to do by hand on the first piece and then transfer into digital form.) Easily 90% to 95% of the actually cutting and shaping is done with CNC using the best pieces of wood I can get my hands on. What remains could be done with machines, but they lack (for now) tactile senses, artistic sensibility, and ears.

One more thing I would like to add: While all of our methods vary to some degree, be grateful that craftsmanship still seems to be a source of pride around here. I can't name names for obvious reasons, but one of the biggest and highest priced manufacturers in the US put their entire process in front of me for review. Had it not been my job to simply tell them what was feasible instead of what the right way would be to accomplish a given operation, they would have received a very different report. I don't think anyone around here is guilty of the transgression of favoring short cycle times and the bottom line over quality... Everyone should feel good about that.

Whoa, hold on there..... Please reread my post. No one was judged.....


Emphasized that it IS a personal thing. Just offered a slightly different take on what craftmanship means to ME. ...and apparently Webster:

1: a worker who practices a trade or handicraft
2: one who creates or performs with skill or dexterity especially in the manual arts

Not sure where the argument and granola are coming from.....

_________________
Chuck Kish

Nobody wants to address trained chimps, robots or aliens? No comment on Inspector Gadget's guitars? Jeez. Talk about a humor vacuum! Hand crafted is one thing but losing the ability to laugh at yourself is another. A life without humor and set by strict definitions is horrifying to think of. Quite Orwellian really.


Posted from my Toaster oven using Tapatalk

_________________
http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

Seems like those who have made the large investment in CNC technology are perhaps protesting a bit too much.

It may be useful to look at this question from the perspective of violin builders. CNC or job-shop parts are very frowned upon. Even the use of machine tools is seldom seem in high end shops. I don't know why many guitar builders see things differently. But there is certainly nothing wrong in either approach as long as one is honest about it. I believe there is room for both ends of the spectrum including the middle.

I may be craving a lot of things these days, but the hair style I had in the 70's ain't one of them! Kept getting in my eyes riding with the top back...

_________________
Phil

http://www.oleninstruments.com

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

Not sure about the robots and aliens, but I thought Costa Guitars was already using trained chimps. Or was it Canada Post?

Posted from the Fillings in Tony's Teeth etc etc etc

Alex

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

Too late...I already did.

Since the beginning of time man has discovered an ever smaller particle from which known particles are composed.

Could there be an endless progression of component particles?

If so, the universe is an illusion perpetuated by.....?

...and I then am what?

_________________
I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

Tony, I have it on good authority that the inhabitants of Zarlon V are currently working on animatronics chimpanzees with artificial intelligence. That’s right ALIEN ROBOTIC CHIMPS! The good news is that phase one of their plan to dominate the earth involves programming them to crochet. . .

_________________
Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Sorry Bryan and Alex. I am far too serious now to consider possibilities other than my own preconceived thoughts.
Self realized robot alien chimps? That's cool but I need to go carve a bridge out of a tree stump or nobody will like me or accept my work.
Later fellas. Off to the jungle to chop down my raw materials.


Posted from my Toaster oven using Tapatalk

_________________
http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

Have you been speaking with my wife?!? I am NOT a trained chimp!!!

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