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At this point in my GuitarBuilding career, I’ve tried to get all my processes as efficient as possible.

I’ve decided what’s important and what’s not important.
For example, I don’t spend a lot of time fussing with the insides of my guitar. I’d rather spend the time on the outside where it shows because I don’t believe that it has any bearing on the sound whatsoever. If you don’t believe me take a look at some old Gibsons saw marks on the braces glue all over the place etc. etc. and they sound great of course age is a factor with a but I bet they sounded dang good right out of the box. The insides of my guitar is as it comes off the wide belt sander -80 grit a little glue squeeze out here and there doesn’t bother me same with the braces.I pre- shape all my braces don’t really touch them maybe except for the ends after I’ve made them.
So here’s an example: today I spent from 8 o’clock to 11 o’clock in the morning, I made all the braces for Ladder Braced Guitar 10 braces all together and glued them to the top with hot hot glue.
I also glued the kirfed lining to the sides and prepared it to receive the top.
Then from 5 until 8 o’clock I made the side braces and notched the top for the braces glued the top on, took a brake for one hour, then routed of the ovehangs, sanded the sides using the belt sander and the rolling pin sander so now it’s ready for binding.

So about 10 hours to build a complete body less binding.

So for this Guitar, and another 5 hours for purfling, binding, cleaning up the binding and routing the dovetail cavity.






Looking for more ways to be efficient


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Oh I forgot I also resawed 3 15 inch tall one piece rock maple backs and sent it through the sander 20 or 30 times -lol


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Thanks for sharing brad! 15 hour box, nice. What's your estimate for a neck?

Pat

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Pat

Many years ago on this forum Mario P. drew our attention to the inside of 30's - 40's Gibson guitars and how glue/snot blobs are all over the place, deep saw marks are on the braces and virtually little to no effort was made trying to clean up the inside of the box.

This was when Lance and I had an informal competition to waste our time and try to be neater than the other with the insides of our boxes...

Seems to me that the added experience gained by increased production opportunities out weighs someone sanding their braces to 220. Looks like both Lance and I lost that competition because it really didn't matter one bit.

Thanks for this Brad it's a perspective that needs to be known on a builder forum.

Building a basic neck-no binding on head or fretboard. The neck itself is eight hours including fitting the dovetail joint.
Then all that’s left the fretting,sanding making the bridge nut saddle, nitro lacquer finish, buffing adjustments, etc. adds another 25 hours -that’s a 50 hour guitar.


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there are a few schools of thought on this. As one that makes a living doing this , beware of just how sloppy you allow things to be.
buyers are more fussy than builders.
I can have a guitar ready for finish in 3 days. Its all about process. I was at the artist guitar show in Harrisburg and know many of these guys. I saw impressive guitars and prices from $4500 to $45000 . The better they looked the better they sold. I was happy to see so many sold at this show.
So be efficient don't be sloppy. Yes Old Gibsons were not as well made as Martins but the prices were cheaper. If you can make a nice guitar and offer it at the $4000 to $6000 range you should do well. Most guitars that sell are Traditional , Martin and gibson styles. Few of the contemporary guitars sold . Many were the 000 and 00 sizes. I am seeing a demand for the L00 . Hope you can enjoy the 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

Brad,
I am curious about the other time that I consider a part of building a body:
Jointing and gluing the back and top.
Thickness sanding the top, back, and sides.
Profiling the sides.
Bending the sides.
Gluing the neck block and tail block to the sides, and clamping into the body form.
This is time spent prior to where your original 10 hours start. How much time do you estimate for this?

Edit. I just saw the additional post where the 10 hours included re-sawing and thickness sanding the maple backs.

I'm with you 100% there Brad. I won't accept tone snot like on the old Gibsons but a bit of squeeze out, who cares... As long as the joints are fitted well on the inside that's what counts.

I can't remember who the luthier was now but I read about it a while back, he would 'fix' the tone of guitars by roughing up the inside. The idea being that too smooth a top is not good for tone.

Brad, I am lucky enough to be an amateur but nevertheless efficiency does still matter. It's no good spending forever on an instrument.

Charles Fox did a series of articles in the GAL fairly recently which, although I haven't implemented them looked incredibly useful. All about the flow of the work and having the right jigs to both to speed things up and keep things accurate. As we know he has spent a lifetime trying to improve workshop processes.

I don't have the editions to hand but they were fairly recent.

Cheers Dave

I've had and seen old Martin guitars (1800's) that still had saw marks on the plates where a perfectly smooth surface didn't matter. The old furniture makers often left interior portions of cabinetry rough where it wasn't easily seen. As things became more mechanized and it was easier to sand smooth both surfaces before selecting the "show" face I think the expectation of having interior parts perfectly finished became expected on higher end commercially made products.
Having worked on many "vintage" instruments I never fell into the trap of polishing the inside of the box, but then again I never catered to the market of the cork sniffer class - or any particular market for that matter. I like building odd and unusual instruments on my own schedule. Occasionally I will do a run of simple cheap and cheerful instruments and track the time and material costs to see just how cheap they should be. Building productively allows Brad to sell to players rather than collectors. It's always nice to see your creations being played rather than hung on a wall.
I think Brad has mastered the process of building beautiful instruments efficiently, and I'm sure they are finished inside and out to the same standards as the better made instruments. I truly admire him for this, and love seeing the many - different - instruments he is able to build. Often individual luthiers will build a single model their entire career.
For those who wish to pursue building guitars professionally, spending a week or two in Brad's shop would probably be a valuable experience. Those of us on a different path can still admire the many beautiful instruments he has shown us.

I had a Martin 1-28 from 1916, and there were faintly visible saw marks in the Brazilian Rosewood back. Still an extremely neatly made guitar, and beautiful rosewood. The saw marks just added some character.

Dave

those saw marks came out in time and are from the heat when it was cut. It is not uncommon on the old saw mill when they went to a band mill those marks went away.

_________________
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

John,
I didn’t mean to imply that the insides of my guitars are “sloppy” …

I just don’t sand them out to 220 or 320 grit as some builders do.

I Definitely agree with you that the traditional styles sell better.
I have no desire to build guitars that look like abstract art.


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Clay,
Thanks for the kind words.
It is true that I mostly sell to players,
usually amateurs.

As you noticed I love building different styles of guitars.
Last time I counted I build 16 distinct models, just today I added another pattern.


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I included all that you mentioned in the 10 hours. Installing the rosette is in there as well.


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Dave,
Part of my process uses both shop made and commercially made jigs.
Here are some I use:
Wedge and batten clamping rig
Sanding dome
Dovetail jig from Elevate Lutherie
Binding jig from Elevate Lutherie
Saddle slotting jig for pin router
Head shape template for pin router
Head Slotting jig for hand held router
Soundhole rosette cutter from LMI

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Brad—

Beautiful guitar, as always. You build great looking guitars!

I think I have seen you build with purflings that go beyond lines and stock herringbone, etc. Do you buy or build the more interesting purflings, and if you build them, is that time included in, or excluded from, the time estimates shown above?

Don,
The times I quoted didn’t include any special purfling just a basic guitar with a few purfling lines in the top at most and single line binding on the back.
I don’t make the purflings, I buy them from different places. Some are from LMI and the others I have custom-made by either Gurian or Karin Rost in Germany.


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Wow! Impressive. You work a lot faster/more efficient than me.
Very nice looking guitar.

I'm so jealous. My body is destroyed but I move on. I'm lucky if I can get two hours in a day before I have to stop.

I am much, much slower too, but that doesn't bother me. I do this for fun, so if it takes longer then more fun.

I think i saw an article back in the 1990s where Jean Larrivee said that sanding the inside of the box with 80 grit paper was really good for the sound. I take that to mean that he stops the thickness sander at 80x for the inside faces. Hardwoods like rosewoods are pretty smooth when thickness sanded to 80x. I've got some Ovangkol and Madagascar rosewood I put through my Super Max 19-38 that's pretty smooth.

The study of fluid dynamics would tend to suggest that a rough surface would have a better energy transfer to the air than a smooth, low friction surface.

I mistakenly sanded the inside surface of my first guitar to 600 grit. Boy was I wrong. It turned out to be a dud.

The shortest wavelengths of the fundamental notes on a guitar are in the neighborhood of a foot, the quarter wavelength at 3 inches. The differences in the scratch distances ought to be undetectable to those sounds (I would have said “invisible” but that’s the wrong sense) reflecting off the inside. My drum sander has 100 grit in it. I don’t further sand the inside. Maybe we need to figure out an easy experiment for this? Alan?

^