The aim of this blog is to show how to make an acoustic guitar . Before we get into the nuts and bolts of it, we have to look ahead a little , to see what we will need in the way of tools required for the job ahead. It is not my aim to send people broke by investing heavily in big equipment, but rather choose a few indespensible hand tools and outsource parts of the work that requires heavier tools.

                            A solid workbench and a closed in area is a good place to start.My first guitar was made in the tropics, under a house, and I think I could count the number of tools I had on one hand. I had to leave the workbench clean after every time I used it. This first guitar took me a year to make, but it suffered I guess from being moved around so much while still in the construction phase. At that time (‘74),there were no cheap benches around, but now there are $120 ones from hardware stores.You just have to assemble it yourself. These benches are plenty big enough to do guitar work on.

                         The quickest way to make progress on making a guitar would be to purchase all the wood precut to approximate size, and then do the marking out and design. The tools you will most need are:

1. Saws: tenon saw, fretsaw, coping saw, razor saw.

2. Planes: block plane,small hand plane, spokeshave.

3. Scraper blades.

4.Clamps: wooden klempsia cam type, metal long reach ‘g’ clamps, camping pegs.

5. Knives: a selection of hobby knives.

6. Drill bits from 1/16″ to 1/2″, brad point type as well as the normal type.

7. Measuring rulers: 12″ long to 36″ long.

8.Machine square, Vernier caliper.

9. Swivelling vice. (Versa vice, USA)

10. Router, with specialist bits.

11. Sharpening equipment: diamond leveling stones.

Most of these tools are available from local hardware stores and hobby shops, but the specialist luthier tools are available from www.stewmac.com or www.australianluthiersupplies.com or www.guitarwoods.com

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 31st, 2008 at 9:54 am and is filed under Supplies for Making a Guitar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.