Official Luthiers Forum!

Came across this where researching what thickener was used with silvertip.
Never come across it before, not read it in its entirety, yet (434 pages), but thought it may be useful for someone here.

http://dl.booktolearn.com/ebooks2/woodworking/9781627872522_The_Phoenix_Guitar_Companys_Guide_to_Guitarmaking.pdf

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

I bought this book a few years ago. I was startled and thrilled to discover from the blurb on the back that the author had a career at the same company where I'm employed; essentially the same job I have; simply a different corporate site (and, of course, some time ago). He retired to build guitars.

That said, the book is more a less a recipe book for their processes to make their guitars. Lots of pictures, high-level overview of the steps. Moderately useful. Not a of discourse on the thought process.

Agreed. I have a hard copy of the book. It’s useful, but I can’t say it taught me anything completely new.

That's a pretty cool manual. Like he said in the introduction he learned from Charles Fox that a luthier should document their building procedure so that they don't end up doing something dumb. That's basically what that is, straight forward and simple documentation of his procedure for building. It doesn't work for me as I have developed my own method but I could probably still learn something from it too. But I like instruction like that without all the fluff.

Their idea of a "small shop" is different than mine