Official Luthiers Forum!

After seeing the post about antique Violins and the mystical properties of their finishes, I took a look online to see about the book that one member mentioned. To my surprise it was available free, and in its entirety from Google Books. I now own it in PDF on my computer. So...I started looking for more books and found that almost every book I own is available to read online for free through google books. Also, if you go to http://books.google.com/ebooks there are literally hundreds of older books that are free and cover mostly classical instrument making, finishing, and construction theory. Some of the luthiers out there that use older methods might like to see what these books have to teach, and if you want a really good look at almost any guitar making book out there, you can use it for that too. This is a great find, I hope I'm not the last person here to have found out about it.

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http://www.sixgunguitars.com

Terrific resource to be sure. The copyright has expired and some are difficult to get on inter library loans.

The main reason I displayed this isn't so people steal others books, but this is a way to help prevent buying a terrible book. When you can read part or all of a book and make the decision to buy, it helps alot. No one is going to run from their shop to their computer and back to get a free book. If they like what they read, they will buy it.

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http://www.sixgunguitars.com

I went to the link and searched for "guitar building" and I didn't see any that were free. What am I missing?

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Formerly known as Adaboy.......

First, you have to be logged into your google account, check that just in case. The "free" means they preview the entire book on the site. Once you click on a book, you can effectively read it right there on the PC. The eBooks (different section) are downloadable for free, but they are mainly older out of print books dealing in classical instrument making, and finishing.

Go to google, click on "more" on the top menu then "books" Type guitar making in the search box on the left hand side. After that, click on one of the books that pop up, and it will have a preview. Depending on the book, it will either preview a few or all of the pages. For most of the books I looked at, it previewed the vast majority or all of the pages.

I really like the opportunity to preview the book on my PC first before buying it. Some books mislead on the cover about what they are going to cover. For example the Mills book, Step-by-step guitar making said it dealt with tuning the plates. The section on plate tuning said that "the internet is full of esoteric articles about tuning your plates, and can provide hours of reading." That's a bunch of crap. If I wanted to surf the net for something I would have. I bought a book to read it in the book.

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http://www.sixgunguitars.com