Regardless of whatever I choose to do. I feel slightly compelled to comment on the quality of this forum. I’ve never seen anywhere else on the internet where people are willing to write entire pages to support someone they have never even met.
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Apprenticeship.
- Thread starter FergusMc
- Start date
Yep, we're like that around here. Most people who get into being Luthiers tend to be helpful to each other, and sympathetic to the difficulties, both technical and business. And the time gets logged into that Non-Billable Hours column.
That helpfullness is the greatest thing in this forum. The more we share our ”secrets” the more we all learn. I think we lose nothing by sharing our ways of doing things, quite the opposite.
I initially learned "pushing sticks through machines" wooddorking. It's the modern way, and all that. This lead to (what turns out to be) an un-nessecarily long period of "not doing wooddorking, due to having no big shop space" starting when I went off to college.
This group/mailing list (and its archives) has people who are collectors (not what I suggest you pay much attention to) and people who are users. As someone who I assume will have little space and cash flow problems for some time yet, I strongly suggest that you learn what you can from them, as the "applying hand tools to wood" wooddorking is much easier to manage on a low budget and in a dorm room or apartment. It's often as fast for a single item (and you don't need hearing protection for most of it.) The knowledge will serve you well even if you get to the point of having a giant shop full of power tools to push sticks through.
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One generalized bit of knowledge which can be VERY hard to see from the "going in" side, but which will be blatant if you ever get as far as hindsight is that "practice makes perfect" is very, very relevant to hands-on work. If you want to build guitars and basses (and/or mandolins and fiddles and banjos and ukuleles...) start building them. The first ones (unless you are Frederiek, who came in with skills developed on other things) may belong in a fireplace, but you need to practice the actual work (not in your head, in real life) to develop the skills to produce work of the quality you imagine. Many, even most, folks tend to give up rather than push on through when faced with the less than perfect results of their first effort at making something.
Of course, most of the people on here who produce work that appears to others to be perfect will only see the collection of flaws that may be invisible to others. This is normal...
This group/mailing list (and its archives) has people who are collectors (not what I suggest you pay much attention to) and people who are users. As someone who I assume will have little space and cash flow problems for some time yet, I strongly suggest that you learn what you can from them, as the "applying hand tools to wood" wooddorking is much easier to manage on a low budget and in a dorm room or apartment. It's often as fast for a single item (and you don't need hearing protection for most of it.) The knowledge will serve you well even if you get to the point of having a giant shop full of power tools to push sticks through.
OldTools Mailing List Control Panel
One generalized bit of knowledge which can be VERY hard to see from the "going in" side, but which will be blatant if you ever get as far as hindsight is that "practice makes perfect" is very, very relevant to hands-on work. If you want to build guitars and basses (and/or mandolins and fiddles and banjos and ukuleles...) start building them. The first ones (unless you are Frederiek, who came in with skills developed on other things) may belong in a fireplace, but you need to practice the actual work (not in your head, in real life) to develop the skills to produce work of the quality you imagine. Many, even most, folks tend to give up rather than push on through when faced with the less than perfect results of their first effort at making something.
Of course, most of the people on here who produce work that appears to others to be perfect will only see the collection of flaws that may be invisible to others. This is normal...
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50 years ago I started as an apprentice at a large engineering company. I regard this as one of the better decisions I made in my life although at times, when it was like being back at school, it maybe didn't seem like it.
I have nothing to offer about being an apprentice luthier.
I have nothing to offer about being an apprentice luthier.
