Australian/New Zealand Luthiers Forum

Are you using the sander to thickness or finish. If you’re taking of 1mm+ then course grain (80 or less), run at an angle 30° both ways, for all woods not just oily ones. Rosewood and cocobolo are particularly difficult to thickness come what may. Be careful with the drum sander that you don’t get r...

For us in the UK the issue isn’t shipping costs it import taxes. Customs duty gets applied to the value of the goods 12%, then Value Added Tax 20% gets added to the value of everything including delivery and customs charges. Typically items cost 30-40% more than the price paid on the site. I go to m...

Please ignore thread, customer changed their mind.

Does anyone have a good link about where to get started with building banjos? Have build loads of acoustics - electric guitars but a client just asked if I could build them a Banjo. My answer is “I don’t know, but I will find out” Does anyone have a go to source for plans, techniques, pitfalls etc etc

So given that different lacquers will have different effects on the sound how on earth do you engineer the soundboard to compensate. Experience tells us that a 1% difference in structure can separate a great guitar from a good guitar. Do you knowingly over thin the top or under build the braces in a...

I’ve always French polished my guitars with shellac. Recently I decided to learn how to lacquer them and have just found the 999th factor that affects sound. I knew it would but never to this degree! It worth noting before I tell my tale that I always complete my guitars before I put a finish on, I ...

Everything was going so well until it wasn’t! I was cutting a binding channel 1.5mm around the lower bout of the top of the guitar with my router. The guide bush worked itself loose in the blink of an eye, I had two choices, quickly avert my gaze or risk a guide bush in the face. I averted and can n...

Been away. Sorry for delay.

Steve you are bang on the money. Just need to stiffen the top I think to try and re-adjust those frequencies. With big hands like mine that’s going to be painful.

That the board has a musical quality at this stage is enough. Some boards you pick up will thunk, they will have a low level of musicality. Use an app like FFT to record the tones that your board makes during different processes, separate boards, glued, braced, boxed, bridged, finished. You will cre...

I have recorded the frequencies of two guitars, fully strung tapped with a hammer at the bridge and averages taken. One is made of Walnut and is a good guitar. The other is made of cocobolo and is the nicest sounding guitar I have ever heard/built. Cocobolo is more dense than walnut so one guitar we...

You are going to spend considerably more time building templates and jigs than you will building your first guitar. Build them well and research different ways of cracking the nut thoroughly before you do. Since 70% of your first build with be spent on creating jigs, you will go on to build a 2nd an...

To be sure I never did see the point of cutting a slot after fitting to the top, unless it is a repair, of course. Is there one?

simso wrote: ↑

Mon Nov 05, 2018 10:57 am

TallDad71 wrote: ↑

Mon Nov 05, 2018 5:00 am

512DB4C5-4763-4154-A81D-F4935DCC26D0.jpeg

Your shop almost looks like a catalog advertisement in sears for hunting cabins.

That is smashingly good looking

Steve

Awww thanks Steve. Its a home from home when my wife has kicked me out. Love it.

Love this game. I’ve only got 12 square metres to play with but can do everything I need. The shop 512DB4C5-4763-4154-A81D-F4935DCC26D0.jpeg Main bench Every minute tools in front, others below. 512DB4C5-4763-4154-A81D-F4935DCC26D0.jpeg Drill bench Daylight comes through those windows sometimes here...

The scariest and most alarming thing that I’ll add is that I’ve had some newer Indonesian made guitars come through for servicing recently and they are sold as Mahogany, however it is what is called “asian Mahogany” “Malaysian Mahogany” “Chinese Mahogany” in the furniture industry. It’s actually st...

Just to clarify. If you delete a lurkers account will that delete any posts they may have made? If so that could be an awful loss to the forum as there is some high technical resources in the archives by people no longer active. We have the option of deleting the users posts or retaining them. Note...

Hi Alan, I went full time into the guitar making and teaching realm 18months ago (from a 16yr corporate IT career). I own the Sydney workshop of the Australian Guitar Making School, i find teaching to be fun, enjoyable, most rewarding, and certainly helps pay the bills and put food on the table. Th...

I know Andrew's school which he started 4 years ago was really boosted by a television interest story and a radio story on local public radio http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-22/music-lovers-taught-to-build-guitars-in-brisbane/7771654 when he was starting out. If you can give a reporter an angle ...

Just to clarify. If you delete a lurkers account will that delete any posts they may have made?

If so that could be an awful loss to the forum as there is some high technical resources in the archives by people no longer active.

Nice one Robbie. Enviable mirror finish on the back of the chisel. Now can I request a tute on how to polish your chisels like that? Cheers Mark from Australia Robbie is old school. For example, did you know he only uses two chisels to shave every day? A 25mm for the cut and 35mm for the reflection...

You could also raise your profile in here by telling us your real name :mrgreen: Aha, signatures! Martin my name is ........... LOL..ya got me there. Missed it when it was staring right at me. No, you were right first time! The "Aha signatures!" was me discovering I could add a signature. I did and...

I will take a leaf out of your book and start posting regularly to social media in a bid to raise my profile. Then hit it hard with a little raw cash on Google AdWords. You could also raise your profile in here by telling us your real name :mrgreen: Aha, signatures! Martin my name is ...........

Steve, thanks very much for your good advice. I think you have probably hit the nail on the head. The problem with most self employed is that they love the technical side of their business but not necessarily the 'business' side of their venture. By that I mean I love teaching and sticking bits of w...

So I can build guitars and I want to start teaching guitar building locally. Ive done my research and I know there is nothing in a radius of 80 miles that runs courses. Thats 20,000 sq miles of potential customers. I have my website, my Twitter, my Youtube and Facebook all set up and ready. My last ...

Are you using that machine for doing truss rod slots? That table looks a bit on the short side. For what it’s worth I bought this router table. It’s very small and quite useful. https://www.axminster.co.uk/ujk-technology-otoro-compact-palm-router-table-ax978206 This is all U.K. based but I would be...