Luthier Tools

[GuitardoctorW7]

I think the answers have been given in good faith here. I have gotten few planes that are in use, but one came from a luthier half a decade ago or more - it was a 15 inch panel plane. Probably the only plane he was using.

I understand almost everyone making acoustics now uses a drum sander, and depending on how serious you get, you may wish to aim for stiffness instead of thickness on a top and have a need to make adjustments.

I haven't made an acoustic yet, but have trimmed 1/8th, 1/10th solid wood to thickness and it's definitely not quite as easy thicknessing something from solid. The risk of making the stock too thin in the center is much greater - you'd probably not mind making yourself some kind of scraper if you want to hand thickness those tops so that you can work slowly and safely on something that can definitely be planed by hand, but can get hairy with the cap iron set on a plane due to the tension needed to hold the workpiece in place.

I don't think I mentioned it earlier - maybe I did. A *really* good 24" reference steel straight edge is nice to have. these used to be about $55 here shipped (starrett 24" 380). With a good straight edge, you can make a million other custom use tools, like long "sanding bars" or blocks, etc, and avoid having to buy less accurate extruded aluminum stuff that adds up.

And on the stew mac-ish stuff, I'd go light on most of those kinds of things until you have a need. I *would* spend money on something that will cleanly cut the binding channel, but just basic. You'll get the skill to be able to wing it some of things more complicated. For example, stew mac sells some kind of solution to cut a binding channel on a carved top - it is insane ($453 with bits and *no* trim router). I've been using a router bit in a cordless die grinder with a stop clamped to the side.

I've cut that binding channel by hand, too, which is doable. Perhaps stew mac's solution takes about 1 minute to cut a binding channel.

Cutting one by hand cleanly can be really long on a guitar with a combination of hard and soft woods - like an hour or three depending, and it's brutally careful work.

And the cordless die grinder solution takes about 2 minutes, and isn't as risky to use as it sounds.

There will be a million small decisions like that.

I'll never regret the starrett edge, though they have doubled at this point.

Yeah the Stewmac stuff can be hideously expensive, but a lot of it is designed with 'pro' guitar builders/repairers in mind. Plenty of other ways to achieve the same results, but if you're doing it for a living time is money. My old mentor would've loved a lot of the catalogue when he set out 50 odd years ago but it just didn't exist.
I've bought a lot of SM tools especially during lockdown as I intend to make Luthiery my retirement job.

 

[D_W]

Yeah the Stewmac stuff can be hideously expensive, but a lot of it is designed with 'pro' guitar builders/repairers in mind. Plenty of other ways to achieve the same results, but if you're doing it for a living time is money. My old mentor would've loved a lot of the catalogue when he set out 50 odd years ago but it just didn't exist.
I've bought a lot of SM tools especially during lockdown as I intend to make Luthiery my retirement job.

that's my thoughts on it - it's designed for repair guys to be able to get jobs through without having to invent something on their own every time. My understanding is that the business was bought long ago, and the divide between cost of what they provide and what they charge will probably continue to increase.

For a guy building guitars, it's a tough place to buy things because there's a lot of chinese stuff priced like western tools and a lot of western stuff marked way way up.

I've never bought the knock offs of SM tools, but one never knows if the SM tools are just the knock-off style tools in the first place branded with their name.

As an amateur, I joined their club my first year building and bought some stuff, but as I got past the initial flurry, i started to compare what I was getting to places like luthier supply on ebay and found that most of the items were still worse with "free shipping" than they were to just buy separately. Sometimes you assume that you'll get something, like the jack cover on a strat - you assume if it's $0.99 on amazon with $2.50 shipping for an unlimited number, then what's shown in the picture on S/M for $7.50 or so per will be better quality - except it often isn't.

big difference for amateurs vs. someone trying to get work through - if you're doing repair work, it can't just sit.

The part where they left a bad taste in my mouth was a direct question that I asked about some of their replacement pickups and if they were the same as the pickups being sold elsewhere gray market by an authorized seller - far less than S/Ms. They did tell me they were the same pickup, but when I asked where the pickups were made, they stated they were made in the US. It turns out they never were, and getting origin is difficult on their site.

I haven't bought anything from them since - not that I wouldn't ever, but it's become impossible for me to find anything from them where they're close to the lowest price on a search listing and sometimes the spread is very drastic.

 

[Ttrees]

Here's a saw worth consideration.
Not really joking as it's not a bad deal (has original fence should you look)

Mainly highlighting the fact you could spend that much on a wee box,
what looks like it contains some bio hazardous contents,
so you know you will be getting a big hit from the customs.

A machine which you should be looking at should you not have it already is a pillar drill.
I bought mine for 40 pounds,

A decent bench grinder likely can be bought for less.

I haven't bought from stu mac since I realised the accuracy of the hand planes,
things like tolerance for want of a better word,
I suggest you make a list, you likely have one already,
and focus on the regular woodworking tools,
and keep an eye out on the bay for good deals.

Buy what you know you will need for lots of stuff...
when you can get it.
Some basic tools mentioned above, inspection kit new can be cheap
like engineers squares from axi, Profchirs mentioned lots of regular tools applicable to luthiere,
and only after that look at the likes of the kit for fretwork or whatever
possibly from UK tooltech or something, Germany, Dicktum or whoever, Maditner is Spain
or other ebay sources, did I see some being made in Hungary possibly.
Likely these will get you most of the kit you need after,

Should you decide to mess around with doing some fretwork might be something else
to focus on, whilst doing retops and bolt on neck conversions and resets,
One could make radius dishes and plenty of tooling doing just that,
before making entire guitars, should they have spent the budget on said fretwork tooling and supplies.

Trying to give you more of an idea, you could buy inserts for fret pressing, not that pricey last I looked, lol.
and make yourself the holder.
Pillar drill, vernier calipers, good selection of bits, tap and die set
a vice, hacksaw nd maybe a few other little things for the ability to make things.
Lots of files, forgot about that, I must have 40 or more, even the cheap wee needle files get used, nothing fancy just good enough to cut cheap ones for the task at hand,
some chainsaw files, 2 sizes for fine work, *******s, half rounds, slim ones, square ones and whatnot.

As David said inspection kit from the get go,
but I'd sooner get a surface plate like a glass shelf or something which is actually flat,
if you can find something which you could check.
Plane up some timbers accurately, or slide two squares butted against each other across the length will show that up either.


Lots of good ideas on the official luthiers forum to study, should you decide to go toolmaking.

David Charlesworths youtube videos might get one the basics of tolerance and accuracy, those principals are much the same with engineering.

Enough ranting now
best of luck.

Tom

 

[D_W]

A follow up about my comments on references. I use a reference straight edge all the time, and consider a 24 inch starrett to be a long-term consumable.

I also have a bevel edge 48 inch starrett, which used to be a lot cheaper than it is now. It's heavy, and rather than use it for anything, I decided a while ago that it's a great thing to leave cased against the wall in a dry area as it will be accurate for my purpose.

the biggest threats to the 24" starrett's accuracy isn't end dings or slight knocking about, it's actually nefarious little bits that I don't notice in the edges.

I think to get something that is 2 feet long in a reference surface is probably difficult.

BUT...


one doesn't have to buy the starrett. Only only needs to know someone who has the same thing, or if it's reference surfaces, someone who has one in a machine shop, and then create your own master.

I got lost in the weeds flattening planes with strong backlight because I was really chasing and chasing to get all light out of the sole of a plane. Mind you, this weedy lost time was about 20 minutes - indicating that we can see far far less than a thousandth with a back light source. FAR less, and when you bust out a 1.2 or 1.5 thousandth of an inch feeler, you start checking and find that the "areas that are much further out" still don't come close to letting the feeler under the starrett.

I have never chanced steel straight edges that are 1/2-3/4ths the cost of starrett with spurious accuracy guarantees (a thousandth an inch or five per foot or something). They're probably a lot closer than their guarantees, but if they have 5 thousandths of variance over 2 feet, it will create big problems checking frets.

I don't have any new or certified square. I do have an old decommissioned 24" engineer's square (not a typo) that is pretty close to dead on, and was $27. I don't need anything better because I have a friend with a certified square.

they ability to do tidy fretwork and a tidy setup is going to make the difference between a guitar that's a good bit of work to play and one that feels as good as anything that can be found. It doesn't require perfect building, but it does require careful enough building that the hardware and the frets will be able to be brought into that kind of near perfection.

 

[D_W]

(out of curiosity, I figured I'd see what S-M offers for a straight edge. Nondescript stainless bevel edge for almost the cost of a non-stainless starrett, with less than 1/7th the accuracy per foot, which could tend toward bigger errors over longer distances. Probably doesnt, but would be in spec. I guess stainless everything is becoming the rage now, and I do get that with folks who may start working on guitars without having ever worked on much of anything else - dealing with something that doesn't rust may be easier for them).

 

[Ttrees]

(out of curiosity, I figured I'd see what S-M offers for a straight edge. Nondescript stainless bevel edge for almost the cost of a non-stainless starrett, with less than 1/7th the accuracy per foot, which could tend toward bigger errors over longer distances. Probably doesnt, but would be in spec. I guess stainless everything is becoming the rage now, and I do get that with folks who may start working on guitars without having ever worked on much of anything else - dealing with something that doesn't rust may be easier for them).

I'd love to find some stainless plate or even good enough steel to make some short straight edges from.
Could get pretty far without this and use timber ones if you had the plate on hand to make sure its accurate.
Perhaps your suggestion is so, to get by without a flat rigid surface beneath the surface plate, as theirs a lot more woodworking involved with using a plate, but the op is looking for the traditional tools for such.

There's a lot of directions one could approach this from though, so perhaps you
might be suggesting tooling from an electric guitar builders perspective rather than
from scratch with acoustics as the impression from what I've read is so,
but I'm just guessing.
Either way agreed on something which is a reference, regardless of tolerances
the practice of inspection is the same and one could choose to pursue better if they deemed necessary later, maybe a good thing if starting in a new workshop,
the planes, chisels , squares and saws might be enough to maintain for now,
should the op decide to build a bench or whatever woodwork endevours might be on the cards.

 

[D_W]

I'd love to find some stainless plate or even good enough steel to make some short straight edges from.
Could get pretty far without this and use timber ones if you had the plate on hand to make sure its accurate.
Perhaps your suggestion is so, to get by without a flat rigid surface beneath the surface plate, as theirs a lot more woodworking involved with using a plate, but the op is looking for the traditional tools for such.

There's a lot of directions one could approach this from though, so perhaps you
might be suggesting tooling from an electric guitar builders perspective rather than
from scratch with acoustics as the impression from what I've read is so,
but I'm just guessing.
Either way agreed on something which is a reference, regardless of tolerances
the practice of inspection is the same and one could choose to pursue better if they deemed necessary later, maybe a good thing if starting in a new workshop,
the planes, chisels , squares and saws might be enough to maintain for now,
should the op decide to build a bench or whatever woodwork endevours might be on the cards.

I think I got my first straight edge to check plane soles and then make infill planes. Before that, I'd seen a friend use a decommissioned 48" starrett edge in his shop (free to him) to set jointers and fences. It was dandy.

In terms of making, I actually out of curiosity went out to look at precision ground domestic oil hardening stock. It's not as cheap as I'd like and the precision is generally graded in thickness and width, and not parallelism or side straightness, though I'd guess it would be good. 18" and 36" are available from mcmaster, and coincidentally, the bar stock is sold by starrett.

This shouldn't be a surprise - the 380 series straight edges are just precision ground flat stock.

If I can find some unused bar, I'll see how it checks out. I don't think I get tight tolerance unless it's cheaper for some reason, but it's always machined neatly on all four sides when it comes from starrett. Some others is punched or laser or plasma cut - whatever it is, it leaves a surface hardness.

the unfortunate thing to mention here about reference is - is starrett necessary? Absolutely not. Are other things with loose tolerances good enough? It depends. that complicates the discussion to a "i'll know it when I see it" in terms of problems.

Friend of mine got an incra certified square, which was about $100 eons ago -he bought it to set up machines and carefully kept it in its own little box with paperwork.

He always had trouble with squareness on his jointer when using it to joint a square side and face on large square stock. That shouldn't be. He splashed out later on a starrett certified square and something must've been wrong with the run of incras. I haven't seen many squares of even indian $12 type that are anywhere near as bad. It was visually terrible (I just looked it up, it's their "guaranteed" line, which gives some kind of .001" spec but it doesn't say from squareness, it says "from nominal", whatever that means. I saw no marks on the thing - something went wrong, he struggled with it and had no other way to check it. he should've taken it to work, but I guess he trusted the cert.

that lesson made me very wary of buying consumer quality "precision measuring tools" instead of just buying better quality older tools most of the time and just confirming them against a new reference one time and getting on from there.


I also have the LV winding sticks from very early on. either forumites or the site suggested they could be used as a straight edge. The two that I have could not - not even close.

 

[Ttrees]

I bought this Soba 150mm square for a tenner at axi, it wasn't labeled as such, just went under engineers squares.
By contrast I bought an old M&W square which has a bit of wear but still just about ok.
Have a old protractor too, same deal, difficult from photos what's got wear.

Regarding some more basic tooling
I'd much prefer this square, and at the price nearly consumable.
Some have bad things to say bout cheap "engineers squares" but at the price
worth a gamble, and if some error present, or it takes a fall, likely more worthy to fettle compared to the trad carpenters variety, which for me cant be trusted,
perhaps with a spendy one, I'd rather not find out personally.
Beats anything made from cheesy aluminium, even though I use some bits,
I'd never put an edge tool against them, strictly for checking or transferring.

Decent vernier calipers will likely cost 20 quid, and wont rust.
Same with some cheap 10 bob rules,
Good value new tools to get now, should the cash be burning a hole in the pocket,
and start looking for vintage planes now, so you can get them at a good price, rather than splashing out on tools when you need them.
That is ones you know you need,
Likely better to go looking for the more specific ones first i.e quite long/short,
and with some waiting, lost bids, or whatnot, you will come across some nice planes like the common 4's for decent money, possibly too cheap to miss out on.

I won't go on about sharpening, but the dia sharp extra fine hone was the only thing I got value from in my stu mac box.
About 40 quid for that hone now, I'd seek some advice here myself if I ever wanted to replace it.
Ultex/ITS/Vaunt hones seem cheap if one can get them for annual 50% off specials
I bought even cheaper card types and bonded them to stone.
Mentioning diamonds as they are likely flat for less faff, but one can use a lap or whatever for tools which might need a flat surface to prepare.
A glass or whatever surface plate should you be able to find some thick float glass and near equivalent lapping plate for the well heeled, or a 2 in 1 for the filthy, just makes sense for tool making and fettling.

Could spend a hundred quid and have a lot to show for it, if you shopped well.
Tom

 

[D_W]

The engineer's squares are either off or they aren't. this goes back to my comment about having a reference.

My frustrated inca buying friend ended up with starrett certified, which would probably cost the moon now. I identified an inexpensive steel engineer's square and that becomes my reference, and until or unless I drop the 24" starrett burglar-boomerang (not that you could throw it), that's also good enough for reference.

Nonetheless, if you have one good one, you can go to any store and tell them you're just looking for something decent as a consumable. I'd use the same term.

Lots of the old stanley type squares aren't very square, but realistically, if I were using them to check edges, they're square enough for that.

Sometimes square really counts, sometimes it just needs to be decent.

I've mentioned on here at least half a dozen times, too, that in the states, buying a vintage hardened head combination square almost always results in something good as long as the rule and head are not cobbled together by a reseller. I haven't had very good luck with unhardened heads - they can drift into the same place as the old beaten up stanley squares.

I haven't thought much further about this - but I do most things by hand. The bearing bits (for binding channels), decent drill bits, decent marking tools, a straight edge, a good square of some sort, and a way to cut frets. I use floats sometimes for nut slots, but that's not mandatory, just a use of what's there.