Official Luthiers Forum!

I realise this is a longshot, but for many years I have dreamed of being a luthier, I have a sketchbook full of designs and have started a few electric guitars, however I could do with someone to show me the ropes when it comes to acoustic construction.

Is there any chance somebody would take me on as an intern/apprentice even if it's only for a few weeks? (cheap labour for you, education for me) am interested in making any stringed instruments, especially acoustics, thanks everyone

Hi HRatcliffe,

You just found one... This forum is a great place to start. There are tons of build threads and "How To" threads. The best way to start is to start looking over what other people are doing and how they do it.

You can always post questions and I know you will get a lot of great advice here.

Cheers,
Bob

+1 Bob

I think Ratcliffe is looking for a luthier to give him some actual hands-on training: "intern/apprentice".

Hi Ratcliffe,
There's a bit more to the mentor / apprentice relationship than most potential "apprentices" realize -- this is probably because this style of learning is not utilized as much in our current age. However, the trouble is that the mentor won't get cheap labour from you until you are highly competent. Their investment in your skills until that time is not a positive for them. The idea is to teach the apprentice and have them work for you once they are competent as way of paying the mentor back for the passing on of knowledge and skills. Many potential apprentices look at this situation from a purely egocentric view of what they can get out of the relationship. If you just go to learn and then bail once you can "hang out your own shingle" then you've essentially wasted the time of the mentor and then become competition for them.

As a novice, the best way to learn is via the internet, books, videos, and /or a guitar making class. The guitar making class or school will teach you the basics. It won't get you nearly as far as an apprenticeship but you can be up and running much faster but will have to learn the finer aspects of the trade on your own. Hope that sheds a bit of light on the situation -- and welcome to the OLF!!!

If you can cough up a couple hundred dollars, Robbie O'Brien's on-line class is quite good. You get step by step instruction (and some of Robbie's entertaining comments). He does do some things I don't want to even try though, like carving the neck on the guitar... But, you can view it as many times as you need to... It really is a bargain for the instruction you get. Having said that - I myself was lucky enough to find a mentor that took me through my first one and it helped a lot... Good luck.

_________________
Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

thanks for the welcome everybody, just to specify I'm not looking for any pay, I have been looking at many courses, but haven't found one that's right for me yet, they're all either too much money or too far away for me, could anybody recommend one that's a reasonable price?

My apprenticeship is not a cheap experience. I pay retail for what I build . I can use anything in the shop and ask questions at any time, I commute 3 hours a day to the shop 6 days a week work 91/2 hours while I'm there. I clean, help on other projects when a hand can be used , watch all repairs. We are a certified Martin repair shop,used to be Gibson and fender .

apart from the commute, I have no problems with the sounds of that, to give everybody a bit of background I have just quit university because I was sick of the commute, my car insurance is getting more and more expensive and my car is getting less and less reliable, maybe an internet course would be a better idea

Every private course that I've seen are relatively expensive. There are good reasons for that. Partly because you are effectively paying for one to one tuition and partly because workshops cost money to run. I won't mention liabilities.
Check if there are any part time evening courses being run by the established institutions. Newark do a full time Guitar making course but I'm not sure about part time courses. There may be one in Manchester.
The other cheap alternative has already been mentioned. Establish some sort of workshop and get cutting wood. There are numerous resources for self learning these days. Back in the bad old days all we had were 3 rather very concise books. That was about it. The difference is night and day with the amount of information that is at hand through the internet. Not only that but there are many more (and much better) books available, not to mention the publications like GAL.

have looked at both newark and manchester, unfortunately I don't have 2.5k a year to spend, and the commute would kill me, I guess I'm going to have to end up just doing it myself, which was how I'd intended to learn in the first place but my family is convinced I won't be able to do it

Luxury. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle... If we were lucky!

But seriously, that's quite the workload. Not sure what I think about it.

You can't afford £2,500 a year - £50 a week - but you can afford to entertain undertaking 91.5 hours a week of unpaid work? Does not compute. Get a part time job and buy some wood. You can build and learn a hell of a lot and then when and if you can get an apprenticeship, you will be capable of much more than just sweeping floors.

It really makes for some long days I hold down a job on top of it (kinda). I own a company and have been learning to deligate.
At first it was spose to be 10 till 3 but we hit it off and there is a lot to be done. If you'd like to see Steve's work its moonstone guitars.

+1 on the Robbie O'Brien courses and you can buy the lessons as you need them.
Btw, i was a little intimidated with carving the neck on the body per Robbie's video, but it went fine, really not any harder. I don't know if I'll do that again but at least I now know I can.
Sorry for the hijack.

Have you had a read through TLB? There are a number of posts dealing with getting started. Have a look:

http://www.theluthierblog.com/articles/

If you do want to learn from a maker, there are many UK builders who teach these days, but you will be paying at least the price of one of their guitars to make your own.

At some point you need to take the plunge. Kits a very economical way to find out if you have any aptitude for the work.

http://www.theluthierblog.com/articles/guitar-kit/

What others have said is true about working for someone. Occasionally apprenticeships to come up, last year Lowden were looking for one, but in general these days, if you want to learn, you have to pay. This is a good situation compared to the 70s when if you wanted to learn, you had to teach yourself, and without the incredible resources available to you now. I am constantly amazed by the standard of amateur work, especially when you compare it to the early work of today's "master" makers.

And even though your interest is in building, it would be very short sighted of you to ignore repair. Take the time to look through this post:

http://www.theluthierblog.com/articles/guitar-repair/

And this one:

http://www.theluthierblog.com/articles/ ... a-luthier/

Actually, you might want to read that one first.

Good luck,

Nigel
http://www.theluthierblog.com
http://www.nkforsterguitars.com

Mr Ratcliffe; I'm with the ones who suggest just start cutting gluing wood. It'll come to you. Be an apprentice when the time and money presents itself. But have fun with it

@HRatcliffe.
I just started building and recently just finished my first. I have however been repairing guitars for most of my life. I worked on my first guitar when I was about 8 years old and found it in a neighbors trash. My family didn't have much money and I wanted to learn how to play so that was the only way I could get a guitar. I probably repaired 9 or 10 junk guitars before I finally got a used one that didn't need any work. But for most of my life I enjoyed working on them and back then there wasn't the resources there are today about learning so I did all of mine by trial and error. I am 60 years old now and just in the last 20 years I have actually been making money fixing guitars. From my perspective learning how to fix them is a great start to learning how to build them. You will understand the geometry of what makes a guitar play well and learn how to fix them after you mess something up.

As I said, I just finished my first guitar and I came here for advice. I wanted to build one from scratch but the great people here suggested I start with a kit. I thought I was above building from a kit but I figured the guys here knew what they were talking about so I ordered a kit. I decided to get a pre serviced kit with the neck carved and the neck joint ready to install. Since I had never carved a neck or made a neck joint I thought that would be the best thing to do since I could then concentrate on other aspects of building and learn as I go. I am very glad I took the advice I got here because there was so much that I didn't know about building even though I have done just about every aspect of repair work. The two fields are worlds apart but I know my repair experience helped me a tremendous amount.

I am not advocating becoming a repair person but knowing something about it can be a big help.

With that said, here are a few suggestions I have for you.

Scrounge around the pawn shops and find a couple of cheap guitars that you can try to take apart. There are a lot of specialty tools you will need in building and a lot of those are used in repair. By taking apart a couple of guitars the proper way you will gain the knowledge of what makes up a guitar and you will start a tool collection. Tools alone will cost you a few hundred dollars but a lot of them can be made rather than purchased. And if you don't have tools like a band saw, table saw, drill press you can plan on spending thousands of dollars. This is not a cheap thing to get into if you don't already have a shop set up.

When you have pulled apart a guitar and are capable of doing some basic repair and setup then you will be ready to get your first kit. By then you will have gained the knowledge, tools, books and confidence to build and complete your first guitar. After building a kit you should have the knowledge to build one from scratch.

In my first post I told you that you found the place to learn and that is right here at this forum. There are a lot of very nice people that are more than happy to help you out and even answer some really dumb questions. I have not found another forum that is like this one when it comes to participation and friendly people. You can learn a lot just by taking the time to read through a lot of the old posts and build threads. There is one huge advantage to doing it that way as opposed to learning under one builder. You will get a wide variety of answers and ways to do things and that will open your mind to think for yourself and not see the world of building though one set of rules.

I hope that this helps.

Cheers,
Bob

My two pence worth.i bought a kmg kit.ken's support is incredible, I had literally no woodworking skills at all when I started.you can definitely do it.

After my mentor took me through the first one, I got John Hall at Blues Creek Guitars to send me a kit. The kit included bent sides and a pre-carved neck. I was really impressed at the quality of the Indian rosewood and other materials he sent me. At that point I was low on tools and it help to have some the work done already. After that I purchased a couple of back and side sets that had pre-bent sides (Martin seconds) from folks here on the OLF and I found some Martin second pre-carved necks. At some point I finally worked up to making a bender and molds, bending my own sides, carving my own necks, slotting my own fingerboards, and making my own bridges... The OLF has been a tremendous resource. ...Books don't answer questions (or have different opinions...).

_________________
Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

What are you WILLING to pay?

(most of us are self taught, with lots of questions here at OLF, some of us bought an on line course or set of DVDs, some bought books like Gore or similar)

You can begin by perusing the entire forum, as it contains a wealth of information. May I suggest a though searching of Youtube as well. Robbie O'brien and a many others of posted just about everything you might want to know. O'brien did all the videos for the LMI series called Luthier Tips du Jour. These are a good place to start. May I also suggest maybe starting out with a smaller simpler instrument in the beginning. Materials are typical cheaper and the knowledge applies to instruments of all sizes. I took a Ukulele building class for $600 and came out of the class with not only with a Ukulele that is better then what I could have purchased for $600 but a wealth of knowledge.

_________________
https://www.instagram.com/fostinoguitars/
https://www.facebook.com/PuraVidaUkuleles/

thanks again everyone, I should mention I already have loads of tools including bands saws, circular saw, tonnes of different sanders etc, I've also been repairing and servicing guitars for a few years, so I already know my way around how an electric guitar works, I would just like to take the next step as I've found repairs don't supply me with a sustainable amount of income in this area and I'd also like to make my business atleast nation wide

also carving a neck doesn't really seem intimidating to me, I was more worried about fretting the neck and bracing the inside of the body on an acoustic, I am also somewhat worried that some of my designs for acoustics would sound awful, so a little knowledge around acoustics would help

If you want income, repairs are what you should be focusing on. Absolutely no doubt about it. The chances of making any income from making is. . . slim - very, very slim. Not that it can't be done (it obviously can) but the odds are stacked well against. Get some sort of reputation doing repairs and your chances of gaining a working wage are MUCH better. Repairing takes a lot of skill and requires at least the same amount of dedication.