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I just bought a TIG welder from Taobao. Sea shipping was cheap and the machine was cheap (had good review, it was a well known Chinese brand).

I have been practicing welding, and it occurred to me that I need some deep throat C clamps for gluing bridges, and Stewmac wants 20-30 dollars for those.

So I made my own out of about 1.50 worth of steel...



I have a few more in the works.

Yes I know the welds are not perfect but I never TIG welded before...

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Handy...

Welding is an incredible skill to have - so many things you can make -- I wish I knew how !!!

Hi Tai,
The welds look plenty strong enough to hold a bridge down (when I was a kid I worked in a shipyard doing burning and tack welding). The clamp doesn't look too bad for the first attempt. You could weld a nut on the side and add a third supporting bolt similar to the clamps StewMac sells. You might also want to grind away some of the roughness where you cut away the metal, otherwise you will have to use a great deal of care to not scratch the top when placing the clamps.
If you bend the metal into an elongated "C" shape and weld nuts on for the bolts you might be able to make your clamps lighter in weight but still strong enough to do the required clamping.
I made some wooden bodied deep "C" clamps. They work, but only so-so. I may attempt remaking them to a new design when I get tired of fooling with the "clamp extenders" I'm using now. If I did more repair work and reglued many bridges I would probably buy the StewMac clamps. Although somewhat expensive they would save the setup time I spend using homemade methods.

Yea, wood only has so much stiffness and if you wanted them stiff enough to equal even the thin sheet metal Stewmac uses you'd have to have fairly large clamps. The reason I welded it like this is because I was worried a bent sheet metal C shape won't be stiff enough to do the job. I mean if I used narrower but thicker pieces it will probably be stiff enough but when I buy the steel I just buy the offcuts, mainly because it's cheaper this way. I cut the steel with a plasma cutter. Even those cam clamps can't apply as much pressure as I'd like sometimes and these C clamps can apply quite a bit of pressure.

Also by welding it rather than bending, I limit the amount of consumables I use. Plasma uses compressed air and TIG uses argon (but I could probably stick weld this and clean it up). To use the oxyacetylene torch I have to use both oxygen and acetylene and there's a risk of melting the steel. My TIG doesn't have AC because I'd like to weld some fins to the aluminum tube so I can put it in a clamp.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Harbor Fright only has a couple of things that I find interesting. One of them is long throat C clamps of various sizes at about $5, less on sale

https://www.harborfreight.com/hand-tools/clamps-vises/c-clamps/5-inch-deep-throat-u-clamp-45916.html

Ed

I still have a couple wooden clamps I made about 25 years ago and once in a while they even get used. You should try making some of those extra long swivel clamps for getting way back inside the guitar.

The reason mine has 2 bolts is mainly so it can clear braces... those guitar ones have them too. I plan on making one of those bridge gluing fixture that allows you to clamp a bridge with only one clamp (makes glue clean up much easier)

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Good way to start making your own tools . You will find lots of uses for it !! in the future.

It's mainly because I lost a lot of the tools I used to have, and I don't want to pay expensive shipping for them again. But there's a seller on Taobao who have luthier stuff cheap...

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

there are a few things you need to know
they have to be square if not they can push the work off line.
A trick I use for that is when you make the threaded barrels. run them on a piece of threaded rod that way the are in line to each other and will
avoid that kicking out

_________________
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'll say this as nicely as I can. But if you can afford a TIG welder (even a cheap one) I am fairly certain you could go down to any hardware store and buy clamps.

You are really wasting alot of your time by constsntly complaining about the price of tea in China.

Hardware stores do not sell C clamps with a throat depth of more than about 2.5 inches (for a very large and unwieldy one). To get a C clamp that has a throat depth of about 6 inches, for crack or bridge reglues, your only choice is Stewmac (30 dollars each) or various Chinese outlets that sells it at probably 50% discount.

If you think buying Stewmac tools is somehow the most economical choice, well more power to you. But my TIG welder didn't cost more than 300 dollars, and making deep throat C clamp isn't the reason why I bought a TIG welder. There are many projects for which a welder would be useful, like building a good sturdy workbench (weld a few square tubing together, and screw a slab of wood on top) or even a thickness sander (weld a frame together with square tubing). Wood sticks is a little expensive in Taiwan and the cheap construction grade ones aren't really that strong, but steel is about 30 cents a pound.

I always thought being a luthier is more about being able to make your own specialized tools than being able to afford a whole suite of Stewmac tools and watching youtube videos.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Get a cheap bender and bend a long C clamp if steel is so cheap.

It's always about cost with you. That's legitimately the only thing you ever talk about. John Hall gave.you some good advice about making a better clamp that you've ignored. Because you really don't care about luthiery you just want to complain about costs of things and how you've "done it better than xyz" because that's ALL you ever do on here.

My landline takes messages. It has a screen that shows me who they are from. I can either press a button and listen to them or press another button and it says "skip".

So it's wrong to talk about cost? Are we going to spend 5000 dollars to produce a 5000 dollar guitar?

If you got issues with me please pm me or report it to the mods if you think this is somehow against the rules. But don't get all grumpy with me because I think there's a cheaper way to do things and just wanted to share it with other luthiers (some of whom gets put off with the excessive costs so they don't want to get in).

If someone wants to spend 10k to buy the whole suite of Stewmac tools, and it makes perfect business sense for them, great. But a hobbyist may not always want to spend that much towards a hobby and so have a budget. You can't make any money if you spend too much to make a product. Especially you can spend almost 1000 on fretting tools alone (all 3 JAWS press and a few other things will come close).

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

I’m not wading into the interchange between Dan Kirkland and Tai Fu. That is between them.

I offer the below as my own way of deciding whether to make a tool/jig or buy it. Maybe it is a useful decision tree for others, as well.

If literally nobody makes the tool/jig the way I want it, I build it. I might use some parts from a luthier supplier, but I design it and build it myself.

If a luthier supplier makes what I want, but the price seems steep, I take a hard look at what it will cost me in terms of both materials and time to make my own. If I think I can do it economically, and save a lot of money, I build it. If the savings are minimal or nonexistent, I buy it.

I keep my eyes open for used tools/jigs, because that savings will often make the decision easy.

This one is important: If the retail price of a tool/jig is relatively modest, and I only need a few of them, I buy them. I’m not going to build artisanal versions of a small number of inexpensive items. That is not worth my time. If I need a large number of these items, then maybe I build them, after the honest assessment of total materials and time investment mentioned above shows that it makes sense. Often the answer I come to is that buying is still better. My time is pretty valuable.

I’m not saying where clamps should fit in this analysis for others, but for me, I buy clamps.

Some of the stuff not directly used for lutherie I've spent money on are actually to make more specialised lutherie tools.
Examples that spring to mind are a cross-vice - used for example to make tuner hole spacing jigs, neck bolt hole drilling jigs and to drill bridge pin holes.
Another is a granite surface block, used for flattening plane soles, scary sharpening, making levelling beams and straight edges, making nuts and saddles. flattening Waterstones.
Sometimes its cheaper to buy the tools to make specialised stuff, especially if they have other uses they will be put to.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

I guess Dan Kirkland must have something against me, but I don't even know him so I'm not sure what he has against me.

However shipping fees figure strongly into the decision tree too. If you live in say New Zealand or Australia where everything is expensive or expensive to ship (that 10 dollar clamp sold on ebay suddenly becomes a 50 dollar clamp when shipping and taxes comes into play, especially how much UPS/USPS charges to ship a feather these days). So for me shipping is a big factor especially for something heavy that can add more than 50% to the cost of the item. Say a neck jig for example (I have never needed them). It's a big, bulky item, that could easily cost another 150 over the cost of the jig to get it to Taiwan, so if I could make them, I would.

However I did buy the radius dish. I really only need one (I find an in between radius and use it for back and top), because I really don't have a way to make them, and the amount of dust, jigging, and finding the right MDF really makes it not worth it for me to make, so I buy it. But if I need another radius for the back, Taobao has a seller that sells radius dish and shipping won't be too expensive (cost is about 50 dollars per dish, and another 10 dollars to ship). So I most likely won't be making another radius dish ever again.

As for radius block I make them because I can use a fly cutter and tilt my milling machine to get the exact radius. I made a few for a luthier buddy for his work. Total cost is about 8 dollars for an aluminum block. I can double side them to save on material.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

What can I say? It sucks to live really far away from the stuff you want to buy. I don't ignore shipping costs, but they are obviously lower for us in the contiguous 48 states of the USA than they are for folks in other parts of the world.

Colin is right that it is often the case that you have to buy some tools to make other tools. For instance, I've spent a noticeable amount of money on 1/4"-20 bolts, nuts, star knobs, knurled brass nuts, all thread rod, washers, taps, drill bushings, countersinks, etc. When I upgraded my workbench with a thicker top, I had to buy longer jig knobs for mounting my special jigs. It pays off, though. I've made some really helpful jigs over the last few years.

Wow, that's a lot of bolts. Here in Taiwan those things are like a dime a dozen (literally). I get like 10 M8 bolts, about 2.5 inches long and the cost is about 30 cents. Steel is about 50 cents a pound, so a 3mm x 20mm flat bar about 1.5 meters long costs about 1.50. Takes no time to plasma cut them into length, weld it, and weld on a nut for the bolts. It costs me about 1 dollar in steel to make a clamp and I can make it with any throat depth I need.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

If you don't have a welder and off-the-shelf bridge clamps don't do it for you, try making them from a steel drawer pull, aluminum tubing and standard furniture bolts that are widely available.

Salti -

those look great. You could even bend them out of hardware store steel rod (3/8""?), dip them in the rubber tool-handle coating, drill through both ends with a long bit, tap them (1/4-20?), and Robert is your mother's brother. Thanks for the idea

Ed

I could bend steel but I just figured welding it like that resulted in a stronger clamp... plus it’s a way for me to practice welding.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

These are 4.25" throat for ukuleles. The tubular arms are 1/2" OD and 1/4" ID 6061-T6 aluminum. They don't bend at all and have the advantage of being lighter than steel arms. The drawer pull is 5/16". That's where all the bend is. The arms of the drawer pull were over-bent a bit so that the alu arms converge about 1/16" over their length. This brings the arms about parallel when sufficiently loaded. I'll bet that bent 3/8" steel would be plenty stiff enough at this size. In a length long enough for guitars, there might be troublesome bend along the arms.

Using barrel bolts simplifies alignment of the screws. The alu rod was drilled out to the correct diameter and the barrel bolts were epoxied in place with a long screw run through the opposing bolts to insure good alignment. Drilling the holes thru steel rod could certainly be done but would be a little trickier.

I wouldn't have gone to the trouble if I could have found clamps I like that aren't built like tanks. If you live where these can be mailed at reasonable cost, they are a better option, at least for me, given the time it takes to shag suitable parts and put them together. Unfortunately, the smallest one is too long for tenor and smaller ukes, though I do use them for baritones:

https://www.stewmac.com/Luthier_Tools/T ... lamps.html