Official Luthiers Forum!

What are your building/educational/aquisition goals for this next year? Here's a few of mine~

EDUCATIONAL: keep learning/teaching! Teaching one student currently. Visit other luthiers and shows

TOOLS/MACHINERY: upgrade table and band saws. Utilize my new Grizzly shaper, & 15" planer

JIGS/FIXTURES: still a few to make

PROCESSES: Probably switch to polyester cat finish after I use up the nitro.
Improve hand skills (bending with a bending iron, engraving pearl, inlaying wood and other media, etc).
Make more stuff from scratch (necks, kerfed lining, binding & purfs, etc.
Reduce guitarmaking steps

GUITAR IMPROVEMENTS/OPTIONS: use soundport, double top, double mortice & tenon neck joints, cf rod reinforcement, fluted end wedge upgrade, fit and finish excellence. Settle on bridge design(s). Carved heels, other top secret stuff I can't reveal yet

MISSION: To consistently improve my knowledge, skills, and processes. Acquire all the tools, supplies and information necessary to make great sounding, playing and looking guitars. ENJOY all the above, while keeping other priorites in order

There's a few things that get me cranked up! What does it for you?

Terr! Was that 2008 or.. 2080?

Sounds ambitious! Best wishes in your endeavors!

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Billy Dean Thomas
Covina, CA

"Multi famam, conscientiam, pauci verentur."
(Many fear their reputation, few their conscience)

I'll play

My goals are to increase my repair business.
Larger shop.
Start "building" more.
Acquire a thickness sander!! (so i can build more!)
and generally be "too busy" !!

I do this full time but would like it to BE full time!!

Good luck to everyone with your goals.

-Rick
RjC Guitar Service & Repair

Finish one, start two and three.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Finish the first one and start the second one. Hope I get enough shop time in.

Vince

Environmental. Stop the basement sprawl and actually build a REAL shop with real storage facilities and everything -- drawers even.

Get my dust collection under control. The ClearVue is in country, now I just need to place my tools and hook it up.

I also want to build one of those massive air cleaners like Mario just tackled.


Tools A wide belt sander is tops, a 20" Disc sander is in the hunt, a 5hp shaper, and a small CNC machine that I can use for some inlay work, fingerboards, and making some tools.

Additionally I am working on coming up with a new series of tools to increase my operational efficiency. Nothing earth shattering, just simple tools that will take a 30 minute job to 5 minutes with virtually no room for error. As the theory goes this will help me turn out more guitars per year and will hopefully "pay for itself" (yeah right).


Education I really want to sharpen the "core" skills of fretting and set up. While I can do it, I am humbled by some of the repair folks. I would love to do set ups and fret work as well as they do.


Other. Get my marketing more together. I have lots of ideas, I need to pull them into a real plan and start doing this end of things in earnest.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

OLF: Post more and stop lurking so much.

Workshop:
1. Contain the entropy.
2. Get rid of the old dining table on casters that creaks and shifts when I sand, vibrates when I route, and laughs mockingly when I cry. Replace it with something more functional and height appropriate. (I loved the recent thread on workbenches.)
3. Improve my lighting (I only have one outlet!)...
4. Improve my implementation of dust collection...
5. Did I mention I need to organize?

Tools: Learn to use the ones I have and get rid of the ones that are in the way. Stop acquiring things before I need them.

Jigs: I'd like to make a voicing jig with destaco clamps to simulate the rims glued onto the top. Bridge profiling jig next, saddle slot sled after that, bridge vacuum clamp following that...(I may break down and buy that though.)

Guitars: Figure out how to fix the binding channel issue I've encountered on #1. (It may be easier to just continue with #2 and pretend that #1 never occurred, but I'm stubborn.)

Education: Keep soaking up as much information as possible on the OLF and through the internet, but steer more towards actually doing to translate the theoretical to practical /experiential (is that a word?) knowledge.

Darren

Darren, I feel you man! Ha!

I'd just like to spend more time in the shop! Period! I hope to put one together that has all the positive elements of the previous builds, (sorry Howard), and none of the bad. Hopefully this instrument will prove as close to perfect in fit and finish as I like imagining them in my mind's eye...

For the shop, a bandsaw is probably the only thing missing. Possibly a jointer, if money permits it...

Rick, you'll never regret a thickness sander. I use it on everything now. Every piece, little or large gets passed through there just to clean it up before I mark and start cutting. It's surprising sometimes how much I have to take off just to get a piece perfectly straight! My 25'' beast is without a doubt the best piece of machinery I own.

I'd also like to play a bit more as well.

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I'd like to be able to prove, just for once, that money wouldn't make me happy...

I always wondered what that noise was during my convulsive lamentations!
Dining tables are mean!

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Billy Dean Thomas
Covina, CA

"Multi famam, conscientiam, pauci verentur."
(Many fear their reputation, few their conscience)

Yeah, I know that is a VERY valuable tool, that's why they charge soooo much for them compared to the other tools !!!! I thought about building my own but sure would be easier just to buy one!!!.....someday!

I agree with you on "playing more" ( if it's in a band that you are talking about) this is a tough year for our band with the economy and the new "no smoking" in this state. ALL bands up here are suffering. We just had 3 gigs cancel yesterday.....not good.

I have one special commission I want to fulfil this year, and a "critique" guitar I want to build for some semi-pro guitarists who are willing to try that guitar out for a few weeks, and let me know what their thoughts are with regards to playability, comfort, etc.

I have to finish my current myrtle/englemann build first....