Official Luthiers Forum!

To clarify, my intention in my last post was not to get into a discussion over what is meant by the term "handcrafted," but to point out that if someone advertises their guitars as "handcrafted," they are tacitly conceding that they do think their customers care about the way in which a guitar is crafted. Otherwise, why use the term at all?

(Sorry to beat a dead horse...with my hand carved horse beating stick.)

I find it hard to believe that someone would use a hand drill instead of a power drill of some sort to do a task like drilling tuner holes just so their instruments can be "handcrafted". Not buying it.

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Kyle

I'm not sure we're so very far apart on this subject Filippo. I was trying to drive home the point that many guitar players may well care about the way in which their instruments are made, which you seem to have conceded. And I readily accept your point that many of those players wouldn't give a rip whether their luthier uses a bandsaw and router along the way.

I checked out your website, by the way. Beautiful and inspiring work.

Maybe we can explore this question?
I think the reasons for advertising guitars as "handmade" needs exploring.
I think it's simplistic to write it off as being a nod to a nostalgic time.
I think it's true that the phrase is so overused that even chinese made crap carries the "handcrafted" moniker, but before that happened, it came from SOMEWHERE.
I think it was a response to the notion that guitar building in the factories has become automated and simplified to the point that all someone has to do is hire a pimply faced teenager to press a button and out pops a guitar, which then goes to someone a hair older who tweaks the necks and kicks it out the door.

Guitar builders began to advertise their products as being handmade as a way to say, "Look! It took ACTUAL SKILL to get this beautiful result, that is actually BETTER than the machine did, and it took me YEARS to be able to perfect this art form!"
It was a way, in fact, to advertise that they could actually DO something besides push a button.
I can see how they could feel that way.

Also, there's the notion who do you want to buy your guitar from, a robot company with a multimillion dollar bonus CEO, or a man with kids and a family? Do you want to help pay for a yacht, or a mortgage and some groceries for a family?" (I know, the robot factory employs people with families that need to eat and pay their rent, I'm just exploring a position.)
So it's also a way to point out that you are trying to make a living.

It seems to me that only after the handmade craze caught on did the big factories start emphasizing the amount of handwork that goes into their guitars, and now the phrase is so overused that people who advertise "handmade" are scoffed at for being hermaphrodites or whatever.

Frankly I'm very impressed when I see a guitar with flawless glue joints, even and consistent binding, sharp clean miters, a beautiful finish, perfect intonation, and great tone, and i know that some guy made that in his garage.

Not as much when I see a guitar made by pushing a button.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Just don't get to it using Cumpiano's method......

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Old growth, shmold growth!

I'm not sure ANYONE gets there by his book. They seem more puzzled than anything.

I'm glad I took his one on one tutorial. It's actually a fun and satisfying way to build, for me.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

I build guitars in my basement. I resaw backs and sides on my electric bandsaw. I buy topwood from specialty vendors.
I cut and shape all the parts by hand, sometimes using a drill press, jointer, drum sander, or table saw.
I assemble all the parts by hand.

My first acoustic is homemade.

By the third acoustic, I'd worked my way up to handmade.

I'm on about #10 now, but I don't think I've quite made it to hand crafted yet.

Where can I find a Master Luthier to tell me when I've made it?

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

When I first started to build almost 20 years ago I became interested in the hand tool process as kind of a "chop wood, carry water" Zen philosophy that would allow me to de-compress from the corporate world. That lasted about halfway through my first guitar when I discovered that thicknessing rosewood down to 2mm was going to take half my life force. At the time I intended to be a casual builder as a means of supplementing our lifestyle. Then my list took off and at one time was approaching four years.

I gradually became fully mechanized and have employed a part-time helper in my shop who performs much of the material preparation for me while I get to do the fun stuff. As I consider my own evolution to this topic it seems to me that the hand tool approach is indeed "romantic" but also a worthy intellectual exercise no less valuable than others designed to provide relief from our hurley burley world. I would only comment that it isn't a great way to make guitars for the purpose of putting bread on the table. Then again making guitars isn't a great way to put bread on the table no matter the process.

I'm in the 'limited power tool' camp: I use a bandsaw, a jointer, because life's too short to be leveling out all the lumber for a hammered dulcimer by hand, a drill press to keep the holes perpendicular and run the Safety Planer, and routers for binding. I've done every operation by hand in the past, and feel that it's really useful to be able to. Hand tool skills require you to understand the wood and what you're doing with it, and help keep you from making dumb mistakes with power tools that blow up wood. Power tools _can_ save time, but don't necessarily. Hand tools are quieter, and less dangerous on the whole.

So long as we make guitars out of wood we'll need to be able to make small changes on the fly as we work to account for the variation in it. This precludes the use of the sort of production jigging that a factory uses to ensure 'perfect' fit and finish. This, in turn, puts a real premium on a very high level of hand tool chops if you're hoping to compete with the Big Boys in that way.

We, of course, should be 'way ahead of the factories in producing instruments that sound the way we mean them to sound. They work to averages, and with the variation in wood you can find one you like in almost any batch of a hundred or so. A good hand maker should be able to make what the customer wants nearly every time. The only way to do that is by using the inherent flexibility of hand tool methods, and knowing when it's time to use them, rather than the machine.

YEAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!

I know a bit about goats.



YEAAAHHHHHH!!!!
I'm an expert on this topic as well. How did this not get the thread closed anyway?

I've said too much. Here is a baby hedgehog getting a bath to distract you.

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC