Hey folks!
I’m a new member at DMS and in a past life I was a hobbyist guitar builder. My biggest personal goal with DMS was to start building again and at orientation they said if we had something we could teach that we should!
People often see guitar building as something as dificult as a violin with images of a million clamps and tons of points of possible failure.
Building an electric guitar is INCREDIBLY easy. Leo Fender designed them to be constructed like an assembly line., be cheap to build, and to repair.
Like any wood project a guitar can be made with hand tools and a ton of patience, and more complex designs need considerably more skill… but the most popular guitars in the world (Telecaster, Stratocaster, Les Paul) can be 80% made with a router and clever jigs.
I’m starting to build my own jigs and purchase many of the more complex/specialty tools and I’ve seen a few signs of other Luthiers in the shop as well as some amazing projects posted on the forum. I’m thinking of forming a Special Interest Group so we could share tools/jigs/advice so it would need more builders like me.
I was thinking of teaching a class kind of “TV Cooking Style” where I go over the various parts, methods, strategies and pitfalls. I could either do it totally as a lecture with all the parts in various stages of a build which wouldn’t require actually doing work in the woodshop (so those that haven’t taken the basics yet could attend)
or be more hands on with live demos of the various methods/setups.
Besides finishing (paint/stain) and fret leveling/filing (which is a learned skill in it’s own right) I can build an entire guitar with just a router and my templates in about 30/45 minutes. So I think I could do the class in about 2 hours.
I’m going to be building a handful of guitars over the next 2 months so figured it would be a good time to setup a curriculum, take photos, make demos, and generally shake out the rust.
If this sounds interesting or you have advice I’d love to know!
-D
