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For a while I was thinking of doing a thread on the power tools using Lutherie.

There’s always something to learn about this stuff.
I think it would help people who are thinking of buying a power tool to see what different uses they have.

I love power tools! They save where and tear on my body and I enjoy using them.

Of course I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that they can be extremely dangerous and everybody should understand their proper use and safeguards and of course personal protection like earphones and glasses, respirators etc.


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So I’ll start with one of my most used machines.
This is a grizzly 18 inch wide belt sander.
I believe it is the smallest true wide belt sanders made. One they’re very expensive at this point I think about six or $7000. I bought this one about 20 years ago saw that on craigslist for $2000 talk to go down to $1800 and rented a tailgate lift truck and drove an hour to get it.
It turns out it’s probably around six years old at the time it was really never used. A very rare find indeed.

Wide belt Sanders or somewhat complicated machines because of their electronics and pneumatic systems detention the belts and track the belt.

Fortunately for the 20 years I’ve had this machine not much has gone wrong with it even after somewhat constant use and what did you wrong with it I could still get parts from grizzly.

Great thing about this machine is it will sand something as short as 9 inches so that means you could send individual head veneers through it to thickness them
I usually leave a 80 grit belt in there the belts are 18” x 48”

It makes short work of thickness in tops, backs, sides, fretboards, head veneers etc. etc. etc.

The trick with this machine as you can only takeoff about 10,000s of an inch at a time. Another great thing about this machine as opposed to a drum sander is the belts last much,much longer.
Also you could do things like sound the binding flush to a fretboard always thinking up new uses.
The other great thing about this machine is the dust collection really works well on it.


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Here’s another one of my favorite machines.
This is a general brand Canadian made 15 inch bandsaw.
I’ve owned over a dozen bandsaws in my life (I have three right now) And I would consider this the “Rolls-Royce “of band saws.
I keep a small 3/16 inch blade in it and use it for cutting curves and light cutting tasks.
what’s impressive about this machine is it rigidity if you look at the picture of the back the entire back is made of one piece of cast-iron .Powermatic also made bandsaws like this back in the day And I have one that is actually a metal cutting bandsaw.

I bought this so I knew about 25 years ago and at the time was $1500. Not long after that they went up to $3000 and just became too expensive so no one bought them and they stop making them you can’t find them on the use market.

Don’t confuse General international with the Canadian made Generals the general internationals are all made in Taiwan and are similar to all the other Taiwanese machines not in the same league.
I use this machine every day for different cutting tests some of them are cutting the tops and backs out to shape including archtops which are 1 inch thick and it cuts those with ease.
Also I’m constantly walking over to it and cutting little pieces of wood or the end of a bone nut or saddle
I even cut mother a pearl on it but that kills blades so I have a dedicated blade for that.
I also cut binding to height on it by using a simple fence made of a piece of wood and a clamp
I could live without this machine – lol



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Every time I use my disc sander to rough out the shape of a bone nut I say, "I love power tools".

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I get a lot of use out of my oscillating spindle/belt sander, especially great for making bridges.

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Brad Hall
Mystic Dawg Guitars

It’s funny, I have a 12 inch Disk sander on the end of my 6 x 48” sander and I never use it .
it’s the only sander in my shop I don’t use .
For some reason I’m just so used to using the belt sanders for shaping nuts, etc.it’s weird, I guess it’s just what you’re used to.


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The Power Tool that runs the most in my shop is the "Dehumidifier"

Probably use Band saw as Next One

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Yes, same here it’s a great tool for shaping the wings on bridges.
Of course it also excels at shaping inside curves on all types of other things as well like patterns


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OK, here’s another one.
This is my S. A. Woods 12 inch jointer from 1899.
Affectionately known as the “aircraft carrier”
It is a two knife round head Babbitt bearing machine.
The bed is 7 feet long.
It weighs around 1000 pounds
It was converted from a leather belt in a factory with a steam engine to an electric motor (3 hp).
When I bought it someone had already Reground the beds to be perfectly flat. This thing is a pleasure to use. The trick with this is to have it set up did nuts perfectly I can do 8 foot long glue joints on this thing with no problem.
The only issue with this machine is that since it is Babbitt bearing it runs slower than a modern ball bearing machine, So sometimes it’s a little tricky with the tear out on highly figured woods but you can angle the fence and make a slew cut and that helps also wetting the wood helps.
Also the dust collection works perfectly on this machine captures 99% of the chips and dust.
I join all my tops ,backs and sides on this machine also flatten the face of necks and heads it’s an incredible timesaver.


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I wouldn’t even have room for that thing! I’m (so far) happy with my Wagner Safe-T-Planer…

My stationary power tools, and what I mainly use them for (going around the room):

Sorby Pro Edge. Best power sharpening system I've ever seen. Not everybody's cup of tea. I sharpen just about all edge tools with it.

Jet 17" floor model drill press, on a mobile base. Drilling holes, obviously. I also use a Luthier's Friend on it, which is useful for thicknessing nut and saddle blanks, and profiling some bridges.

ClearVue cyclone dust collector, with 6" PVC pipe going to as many tools as possible. It will suck up a tape measure, but that's not what I use it for.

Ridgid hybrid table saw with short Vega fence. Gosh, what don't I use this for? I use it for every sort of straight cut of wood. I cut fret slots with it. I cut kerfs in kerfed lining with it. I cut purfling lines from dyed veneers. I use it a lot. This also houses my router table in the left wing. I have a lift in the router table, and just use a Porter Cable PC 690. Nothing fancy. The lift is wonderful to have.

DIY 12" disc sander. I bought a used 12" steel disc from someone who "chop shopped" an old Delta sander, then I harvested a cheap motor from a Harbor Freight sander, hooked up a shaft and some pillow blocks, and wham, I have an awesome disc sander. I set it up with the ledge a la Kevin Ryan, so I can do convex curve template sanding with it. Wonderful tool.

DIY 24" powered dish sander. There is a thread here on the OLF with photos and a description of my powered dish sander. It is powered much the same way the 12" sander is, but with an extra shaft for reduction pulleys. Another wonderful tool. No driving the bus for me!!!

Jet 14" bandsaw with riser. Another tool I use for darn near everything. Just a normal bandsaw, used the way bandsaws are used in guitar making.

Delta Rockwell Uniplane. This is new to my shop. I haven't yet incorporated it into my building, but I have high hopes for it. It's a rotary planer with the cutters on the vertical reference surface. It will serve as a jointer, but it can do a lot more. We'll see how it goes.

Pre-Jet Performax ShopPro 25. This is a Mac Daddy drum sander. The drum has pillow blocks on both ends (non-cantilevered), so it is very solid. 25" width capacity, can go as thick as 4" or as thin as 1/32", and as short as 2.25". Everything goes through this to clean up and flatten the faces, and arrive at the right thickness. I can't think of any parts of the guitar that don't go through my drum sander at some point.

Ridgid spindle/belt sander. All concave curves get smoothed out with this spindle sander. I use the belt sander for anything that needs fast stock removal, and/or I don't care how gross a job it is, because the belts are super cheap.

For handheld power tools, I use the much-maligned Bosch Colt for laminate trimmer duties (including in all the normal jigs, like a binding channel cutting tower, and a circle cutting setup with the Bishop Cochran router base). I use a Foredom for Dremel-type tasks, like notching for brace ends and inlay work. I use Festool hand sanders and a Festool dust extractor for sanding. I use a Homestead Finishing QualSpray spray gun and a California Air Tools compressor for spray finishing, as well as a 3M PAPR system for PPE during spray finishing. I use a DeWalt battery powered drill. I bend sides using a Luthier's Bench bending iron, which is wonderful. Everything else is probably a hand tool of some sort.

The oscillating tool is one of my favorites. It can do so many of the small odd jobs in lutherie as well as around the house. Certainly not industrial, but very handy. I needed to make a small bracket - oscillating tool, a scrap of aluminium, and Voila!

The oscillating tool is surprisingly useful. I bought one for general carpentry (great for that too) but now it lives in my shop for guitar work.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Brad, I clicked here with a thought in my head about power tools that one might consider brining into a hobbies shop. Then I see your industrial machines and am blown away. Way out of my leave but awesome to see.

I Donny have a jointer (or thickness planer) and I see you have a 12” jointer! That would be awesome to have but way out of my reach for my hobby. That belt sander is really something too. I would love to have that. I’m not trying to do this even close to professionally but it is great to see what you guys use!

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

That jointer looks incredible...

I have my Jet 14" bandsaw, a belt/disk sander combo, Performax drum sander, drill press, and a few various routers.

Saving up for a SawStop Jobsite Pro. The size makes the most sense for the garage and I'm unwilling to have a tablesaw at home without the technology.

The bandsaw, drum sander, and drill press are my oldest tools. The bandsaw gets used constantly. The drum sander's invaluable but used minimally, and I've used the drill press so few times I can't even remember the last time I turned it on.

The belt/disk combo is new to me from a friend who needed to find it a new home. I'd used the Ridgid belt/oscillating combo prior. Disk sanders are so incredible powerful and useful for quick material removal, and I love having one in the garage.

Several years ago, I decided that there was no justification for keeping my Craftsman contractor saw when safer technology was available. I looked at the Job-site Pro and figured there was just too much plastic for the price. I bought the Sawstop cabinet saw. I am really glad I did. It is way better designed than any table saw I had ever used before. The combination of the precision, the power, and the safety has me using it much more, doing things I used to do on other tools. Save up and get the good one. I bought a second cartridge for it when I got it. To date, I haven’t triggered it.

That said, guitarmaking has been very, very good to me. I have and use a Delta drum sander, two bandsaws (an 18” Rikon for resawing and a 12” Craftsman for the little cuts), a Rikon disk/belt sander, the aforementioned Ridgid oscillating spindle sander, a Voyager drill press, a ROS ( rarely used), a quarter sheet sander, a Mouse sander, and many routers. I also use a midi-lathe for making pins and banjos. I made a motorized radius dish sander. My favorite tool is usually the one I am using at the time to accomplish something—if a tool doesn’t please me, I either do the process another way or replace the tool with one that is more in line with the way I do things.

I still call my guitars “handmade.”

I’ve put a lot of time in on the cabinet saw and agree it’s incredible. In my context it’s about managing compromises. Footprint, portability, and price are the keys here for me. I’m sure I’ll look at the Contractor model as well.


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I have a shop full of tools--not as many as I had before I downsized to NC though. My tablesaw (old Unisaw that I still love)/router table doubles as an assembly bench with a T Track top mounted to the top. Easy to remove whenever I need the saw or router table. I have a couple of CNC machines that I use a lot, but not really for guitar making (other than bridges and fingerboards), but I've done a lot of banjo necks and archtop plates on them. I use a 12" Jet disk sander quite a bit, as well as a Clayton oscillating drum sander and an old Performax drum sander. I use my drill press a lot too. Jointer, seldom, but it's nice to have around. Big lathe for banjo rims. Shopsmith for a horizontal boring machine (mostly on banjos). Uniplane that I use for peghead faces mostly. Also a couple of Lindsay Air Gravers that I use for engraving pearl and metal. They're great because they handle just like a regular hand graver, but are super easy to control. ROS and Ridgid Oscillating belt sander. I like tools and machines...

But, if I could only have two power tools in the shop, they would be my 18" Jet bandsaw and a router (I actually have a lot of routers, I'd hate to have to pick only one...). Everything else that I'm not already using hand tools on could easily be done with them. Those two machines would be really hard for me to live without.

Dave

Steve and Clay- Never have had , or used, one of those oscillating sanders, I wonder what you use them for? I'm always up for new tools that work. That said, I have bought many tools that don't work. Worst thing about that, is if you have a conscience, you can't sell to anyone else, so they basically haunt you as long as you own them. I have learned to just give them away. That way, you keep your friends!-Bob

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“ The meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose of life is to give it away” Pablo Picasso

Hi Bob, I use the oscillating tool for cutting. Since I do different guitar shapes I don’t have side patterns so I mark them in the radius dish after they’re bent then trim them with the oscillating tool - not for everyone but it works for me.


Steve

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Exact same scenario here, I couldn't agree more!

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Yes ,an oscillating tool comes in handy For certain tasks.
I have the Fein brand which I believe was the original one.

But when I have to cut a piece of metal I have an incredible Powermatic metal cutting bandsaw circa 1950 That will cut quarter inch steel like butter!
It actually has an oil bath multi gear transmission looks like a small bandsaw it’s got 15 inch wheels but I probably weighs something on the order of 500 pounds.
I completely rebuilt and painted this machine.
I make my own metal brackets for my Archtop tailpieces From sheet brass and stainless steel make short work of it.



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On the topic of metal working power tools I have several since at one point I was making knives but they come in really handy for Guitar related activities.
This is a 1950s Burke Millwright R-8 milling machine.
Aside from making jigs such as head slotting fixtures from Lexan I use it all the time for routing splines to reinforce broken heads.
This is the heaviest machine in the shop weighing in at 1600 pounds. The vise which you can see sitting on the base weighs about 100 pounds
This is a three phase motor on this machine that I use a static phase converter to run on single phase 220 Volts



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This is an interesting to all that is technically a metalworking machine but can be used for wood as well- it’s a 2” X 72” sander.
The thing about this machine is as you see in the picture it’s set up with a Platten but it can be quickly converted to a 10 inch wheel down to a half inch diameter wheel and also can use it as a slack belt sander as well.
It has a three phase motor With a variable frequency drive which means you can slow the belt down very slow but you still have full torque and it runs on 220 V single phase.
I use this a lot for shaping mother of pearl all kinds of tasks it’s an extremely versatile machine.
I have belts from 36 grit out to 2000 grit.




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I have a 5 hp Delta Unisaw from the 70s With a Bissmeier fence.
Literally the only thing I use it for these days is Fret slotting with the templates.
You would have to try really hard to hurt yourself with a .024” blade sticking up an eighth of an inch -
lol

These days I have a panel saw which I find to be extremely safe compared to a tablesaw.

The only downside to the saw stop (which I know is a great saw) is that it doesn’t guard against kickback. If you notice to the right of the sliding table Is a hole in the extension table, that’s where I have my router mounted underneath so I could use the fence. I cut my truss rod channels and I also route my arch
top Binding with that



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