Official Luthiers Forum!

The "craft" certainly has changed quite a lot in the few years that I've had exposure to it. My first glimpse into handmade guitars was back in 1977. The local repair guy was also an accomplished violin maker, and we also found out that he was quite a great guitar maker. Exceptional even by today's standards. He used the same neck joint as in Cumpiano & Natelson's book, the pinned mortise and tenon. It took white a craftsman to accomplish this joint, and he even made it look cool on a florentine cutaway.
We could all benefit from having better hand tool skills. Those exacting behaviors can teach accuracy and patience, which are things I really struggle with at times.
To balance it out though, having jigs that allow you to assemble a guitar body and neck with repeatable accuracy is something that can make or break a person's ability to earn a living at this craft. I try like mad to keep a balance with all this, but I find myself more and more looking to find easier, better, faster ways to make guitars. I can't tell you how many times I've debated having necks made by cnc.

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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."

Don W said "We could all benefit from having better hand tool skills. Those exacting behaviors can teach accuracy and patience, which are things I really struggle with at times." I couldn't agree more but where does tradition stop and common sense enter the picture. I can't imagine being on the bottom end of a two man saw cutting my own planks from a log. I remember making a chest of drawers out of cherry for a client many years ago. I laid out and hand cut doevtails for the drwaer sides front and back. They looked great and I felt a great sense of accomplishment.
When I delivered the piece with it's glowing hand rubbed varnish and showed her the hand cut dovetails I recieved a "Oh how nice" I'm sure a could have cut them with a router and a dovetail template and recieved the same response. Would have upped my hourly wage too.

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[QUOTE=highdrawlicks] In this day and age of jigs, jigs and more jigs, where does luthiery cease to be a craft and become a manufacturing process? What with bending forms, raduised dishes (which I really like now), little Dremel CNC machines, and (here it comes) BOLT ON NECK HARDWARE, nearly anybody with two fingers and an opposable thumb can build a guitar.
[/QUOTE]

I have to ask, are you serious or just being provocotive? I'm not disagreeing with your assertion that jigs, forms etc make lutherie easier. Heck, they make ALL types of woodworking easier. The difference today is that more people can afford what was a few short years ago, the provence of the wealthy. I may be new to lutherie but I have been working with wood since I helped my dad make a "moth" class sailboat when I was 11. I learned my craft on handtools and learned, much to my dismay, that the uninitiated as well as many who are, don't give a rat's rear end whether I cut that miter with a handsaw or chop saw!

I am one who spent hours talking with the priviledged who taught/built at Colonial Williamsburg. I had a lot of grandiose ideas about "hand built". Bunk! No one cares. If they care at all, they care about the state of the art. In other words, they care about fit and finish. They care (sometimes) about materials. The number of people who truly care about "completely" handmade (only handtools, etc) are so rare as to be considered an endangered species.

Please don't think me bitter as I am not. I have come to my opinions through 30+ years of experience working God's noblest and most versatile raw material. I am new to lutherie but not to the idea of it. I am approaching it with conviction and the full realization that if I am to make a "go" of it during my "retirement", I have to be able to "crank" out enough product to make it worth while. Why slow myself down with tasks that no one will ever appreciate? Hand planing a curve rather than using radius dishes? Who really cares? To say though that just anyone can do this even with state-of-the-art tools misses a most fundamental element of any vocation/avocation, talent.

What counts in the end is sound. I have to learn the craft and produce a product equal to or better than the next guy (gal?). Even Torres produced far more "cheap" guitars than concert instruments. He did so because of economics, not choice.

I really am thankful you brought up this topic because you "forced" me to put feelings into words that I hadn't really considered before, thank you!

Regards, Steve Brown

Bob and Steve,

You are right on target, in my opinion. Very well stated.

Jeff

I think hand tool skills can be time savers. Sometimes I see people spending time building an elaborate jig channeling Norm Abrams -- "and now I will put a 1/16th" chamfer on the edge of this board with an 10' long jig and my routah"

Now go back to making guitars

At the risk of inserting foot in mouth - the issue to me isn't really hand vs. machine. It has more to do with "certainty vs. risk" (aka David Pye, James Krenov, etc). What chance does the craftsperson have to affect (for better or worse) the outcome?

Jigs, templates, etc - save time, improve efficiency & quality - but I also think they have taken on too much importance for the beginner. Instead of talking about building instruments, we are discussing leasing options for jigs. Jigs that perform operations that you can do quickly and accurately with a modest amount of skill, a chisel and hand drill.

Of course, those skills require time and practice, and our lifestyles tend not to allow for much free time. So, we turn to production methods to give us the results that we have set for ourselves. Production methods that have been engineered to require as little thought and skill as possible. To allow for no variation.

When you need to shape a piece of wood, do you immediately think "fixture" and start looking for baltic birch plywood and your router? Sometimes I do. It's easy to get into that mode. Or do you reach for rasp, chisel, spokeshave, handplane, and just go at it? I like my routers, but it's the improvisation/spontaneity that is fundamental to my enjoyment.

Somewhere there is a happy medium. Automate and fixture those operations where it makes most sense, but don't avoid taking some risks and developing a balanced set of skills. You learn the most from taking chances and making mistakes.

Quote "And just a quick comment to Steve Brown and Bob C. I guess when it comes to nobody else caring whether an instrument, dovetail, or whatever was hand crafted or machined, I guess what I was trying to convey that it matters to me how I did it."
Michael I couldn't agree more. There is a trmendous amount of self gratification to be had. I bought a book years ago that had all hand drawings of the old tools and how they were used. I read that book from cover to cover many times. I also agree that many tasks can be accomplished quicker using hand methods rather than setting up a machine and a fixture. The problem arises when you start doing this work for a living and figure out your hourly wage. How many craftsman can survive on $4-5 per hour? Here's an example of many hours of hand work and very sharp carving tools.

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Bob,
Is that a 12, 13, or 14 fret?

[QUOTE=EricKeller] I think hand tool skills can be time savers. Sometimes I see people spending time building an elaborate jig channeling Norm Abrams -- "and now I will put a 1/16th" chamfer on the edge of this board with an 10' long jig and my routah"

Now go back to making guitars[/QUOTE]




Steve Brown

So...let's see if I have this right.

Jigs and tooling are put down because they save time.

Hand tools are praised because they can save time.

The right answer for this issue is going to be different for everyone. So much depends on what your objectives are and where you are comming from. For example, I'm primarily a musician who has fallen in love with building. However, my goal is to produce an instrument that I personally like to play and wont be embarassed to show to others. I only build about one instrument per year. I'm looking at losing 6-9 months of work if I destroy and instrument. I don't build jigs to make an operation faster. I build jigs to make that operation more accurate and safer.

As my skills have improved, I've started to use hand tools more and jigs less. I do this because it is faster and easier and my risk of ruining the instrument is low. This time it takes to set up a jig is not worth it when I can do it with a plane or chisel provided I'm reasonably certain that I wont screw it up. If I have a doubt, I build a jig.

By nature I am a traditionalist. I feel that you should learn most wood working skills with hand tools. That said I am also understand that I can't afford to practice my craft by giving away the labor required to build with no power tools or fixtures. To me fixtures add more directly to the quality of the product than power tools by building in repeatable accuracy. Some may feel that this distracts from the craftsmanship, and in a pure sense that may be true. But I have not made the name for myself to command a labor overhead of +$20/ labor hr. In fact by my figures I am getting barely $5 on my labor. But right now I am not in this to make a living. I am in it to build guitars. However I do need to make enough to support tools, wood and utilities, and of course show my wife I am not wasting my time. Therefore I believe fixtures are a necessary evil.

You + employees = manufacturer. You alone or + apprentices = craftsman. You, making each instrument unique = artist.

Plane, chisel, band saw, jig, CNC: They're all just tools.

Carlton

They're all just tools and the important thing is that you enjoy the process (hopefully) and the product. Are you a craftsperson if you build a fine instrument and start with a kit, or a tree? Absolutely. Are you using your hands to construct it and your brain to envision it? Yes, regardless of the tools.

Not to start a tangent, but Norm takes a lot of crap from the neanderthals (aka. hand toolers). In reality he is a very fine craftsman. People see the shop and the tools and think the projects just build themselves - very wrong.

I work alone. Each instrument is unique but not necessarily unique in joinery. I use mortise and tendon jigs as time savers and accuracy tools. I use body molds to assure plum and square. I use routing fixtures to save time and repeatability on common components.

I personally don't feel as if this takes away from my craftsmanship because I have done it all by hand and know the attributes and restraints of my skills. The fixtures and Power tools I use have there own learned skill to their operation. I assure you that the seventeenth century luthiers took advantage of the tools available at their time, and if power tools had been available they would have used them.

So this all asks the question.” Am I a manufacturer, craftsman or artist? Humbly, I clam only to be a luthier at my current stage of enlightenment.
MichaelP38504.5810648148

The "tradition" also includes working under candlelight (or gas lamp), with no safety gear (breathing, eye protection, etc), in shops with no humidity control.

[QUOTE=Steve Spodaryk] Not to start a tangent, but Norm takes a lot of crap from the neanderthals (aka. hand toolers). In reality he is a very fine craftsman. [/QUOTE]

I like Norm, and my comment was unfair, but there's nobody else to pick on.

I like the Cumpiano approach of no molds and lots of hand tools. Of course, he chose that approach because he assumes you don't have a lot of jigs and tools. The guitars I've made without molds came out pretty good, so if I am going to make just one of a particular shape, I'll do it without a mold.

For some reason the debate between jigs and handtools reminds me of the conversation I have when trying to hire new contractors. They always say you can have it good, you can have it fast, and you can have it cheap--now pick any two!

I think this rings true to many of the opinions above.

Cheers!

John

It's not the tools....

But how many times have I told my wife "Honey, I could do it if only I had the right tool". Never works; she figured me out long ago when I went to get a tool to fix the toilet and came home with a drill press. I will now cease any more self-indictments.

Shane, what was her problem? Aren't drill presses necessary in any good plumbing job?

It's like cutting the grass-- one needs a new table saw.

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You're preaching to the choir, Steve, preaching to the choir.

It is essential having the right tool for the right job. Anybody knows that.

of course!

without the table saw one would not be able to build the blade sharpening jig, not the wheel alignment jig, nor the grass height measuring jig, not the...

There are a many things that I think a begainer should learn by hand before using jigs or power tools if they intend to continue the craft.

The first and formost imho is thichnessing. Learning to use and maitain a plane is critical in our craft.

Second is bending. What I learned about feeling the wood bend would be difficult to pick-up on if all you ever bent on was a bending machine. By bending on a pipe I learnd how to listen and feel the wood.

There is some debate as to if rim molds impart stress on the rim at top and back attachment. I try very hard to bend a good match to my mold profile to help eliminate some of this affect. But common sence tell you that if you use use either a go-bar deck or spool clamps that you have to be adding some stress to the rim. I have never had a rim fail due to stress form using a rim mold or go-bar clamping