Workshop Tools - the essentials???

[BassHappy]

I was going to suggest that, and then I noticed how much crufty "text from some prior version of talkbase that got turned into odd &# codes" there was in the that post, which made me question how intact the grand link structure might (or might not) be. But I haven't checked it out to see if that suspicion is baseless or not. In either case, it looks like the post itself could stand cleanup if only for those things - they make it annoying to read, if nothing else. And surely a few more things have come along in the past 10 years?

Hey T Bone

I had seen that but it did seem a bit disjoined and out of date. I thought it was best for me to try and get advice from the current crop of builders, and there have been some really helpful posts here, so I am glad i started this. Thanks to all the contributors.

 

[BassHappy]

I also noticed that the furniture shop where I am working has a pretty incredible selection of clamps. I think every kind of clamp I have ever seen was represented there, many of which seemed too big for most guitar clamping projects. Any recommendations on which clamps and how many? Has any reliable manufacturer put together a complete set of clamps that would work well for this work in one discounted package?

 

[Jisch]

I bought a package of six Irwin trigger clamps off Amazon (2 each of small, medium and long), they're not cheap, but they work well. A friend of mine bought a similar pack from Harbor Freight and the clamps didn't work at all - he said they applied zero pressure. I also bought two Irwin screw clamps. I think if I had two more long trigger clamps and maybe two more screw clamps I'd have enough for just about anything. You can definitely generate a lot more force with the screw clamps, but that's not always necessary.

Actually now that I think of it, I should really have some pipe clamps for gluing up body blanks, I forgot I use those, but I'm usually doing that operation at my dad's shop.

edit: I was just thinking how I use clamps - I probably use them more to hold things down while I work on them than I do to hold things together for gluing. That is probably obvious to most, but thought I'd point it out.

 

[Eric Bates]

Start working on your project and buy a tool when you have a need for it.

 

[D-Smith]

Some of the basic hand tools would be:
- #7 or #8 hand plane
- block plane, preferably with an adjustable mouth
- spokeshave, adjustable mouth
- set of basic chisels like Marples Blue Chip
- cabinet scraper or two
- rough and fine diamond sharpening stones, ultra-fine water stone

I'll take a look around and see what else I would consider essential.

 

[mapleglo]

I bought a set of 6 of those Bessey clamps, they measure 10", from Home Depot for like $25. They have proved extremely useful. I have 4 of the yellow clamps, they measure around 28", from the wood store - I don't know the brand. I use those for body glue ups. And I have one of those Irwin clamps, measures around 15". I wish I had more of those, also very useful. I have a couple of that size I got from Harbor Freight which turned out to be junk. There's nothing more frustrating that trying to use a pice of junk for quality work. Buy once, cry once as they say. I also have one of those Jorgensen wood clamps which is also useful - I wish I had a few more of those. And finally, I have maybe 6 "C" clamps. 4 - 4" and 2 - 6" which come in handy.

My Dad used to tell me to always buy the best tools you can afford. Advise I usually follow, and always regret when I don't.

*edit - pardon my pink candy striped bathrobe in the 2nd pic - limping around this morning waiting to call doc for my foot appointment - I think they open in an hour...

 

[Jisch]

Bessey clamps are awesome - my dad has those. I need to spend some time over there cleaning his clamps though, the threads are all full of glue, every time I use them I have to spend a half hour cleaning them up. It seems he uses them at the extremes of their travel more often than I do. I need to spend more time with the jorgensen clamps - keeping the jaws parallel has always been a challenge for me.

 

[Lo-E]

Start working on your project and buy a tool when you have a need for it.

There's a lot of merit to this approach. Everybody works differently and there are a lot of processes that can be accomplished in many different ways. Tool yourself up around the way you like to work. Most shops develop through evolution, not revolution.

 

[Remyd]

*edit - pardon my pink candy striped bathrobe in the 2nd pic - limping around this morning waiting to call doc for my foot appointment - I think they open in an hour..

Metal.

 

[bearhart74]

+1 piece of gear that should be top priority is a good fire detection and suppression system. Ask Brubaker and Roscoe are two that i know of who had fires in their shops.

 

[Rôckhewer]

Why anyone would want to "skin a cat" is beyond me. ....but being as there are a multitude of ways to go about it and arrive at the same results is why I say.... Keep an open mind, find stuff that works for you, ....don't be afraid to try things that may seem "unconventional"...but get the job done. (As long as they are somewhat safe)

 

[Ross W. Lovell]

Hey folks of the TB

First of all, I seem to post things in the wrong place from time to time, so I hope this is the right place. I searched on this topic, and was hoping there might be a sticky or something - but I was unable to come up with anything. Perhaps I searched on the wrong things - so - if this is covered somewhere else, please point me there and I will sheepishly ask the mods to delete this. I also searched on google and it wasn't easy to come up with bass builders, and a lot of the wood shops were acoustic guitar oriented, which seemed like a different kind of tool-up.

I have been working in a local wood shop on 5 prototypes of a new bass design. It looks like, I too am becoming addicted to this building thing. I have an opportunity to rent a really nice size barn and if the negotiations go well - there would be room for a small shop. When I was in Germany last October I was fortunate enough to spend a few days with Jens Ritter and I was amazed at how small yet practical his shop was. He does an awful lot of stuff with hand tools.

I realize that folks work differently. On one hand you have the ones who basically like to do as much as possible by hand - carving, sculpting, chiseling and rasping their way through. On the other extreme we have Bruce Johnson and the like - who have literally dozens of machines, dating back nearly 100 years or so and many duplicate machines - that have different features that Bruce modified or even invented to suit specific purposes. Of course, I am sure that Bruce still does a great amount of work with hand tools as well.

I am thinking I am somewhere in the middle. I wanted to start planning - and I don't want to pick up any tools or machinery that might not be suited for what I need. I guess one of the other big issues is with vacuum systems and keeping the overall environment and air quality as healthy as possible. I did see the Wynn video on the state-of-the-art shop he put together - and it was inspiring and humbling at the same time. Not thinking about something like that - that is for sure! I also realized that if you buy used there can be a big maintenance factor, but I think the shop where I have been working would be happy to lend a hand to keep me up and running. I could always rent their shop for the use of some machinery and slowly buy a machine here and there as my budget allows - and as the used equipment deals come up.

While their place is a great furniture-type wood shop, I have already discovered that there are at least a few things they didn't have specifically for bass building - and they have a lot of things that seem overkill too. For example, we needed to clean up the insides of 3 hollowed out clamshells, top and back - after routing and grinding. They didn't have a small sander and it was taking forever to get these cleaned up. So I pickup up a small 2" orbital sander for $20 on Amazon which turned out to be perfect for the job and saved a lot of time.

So, I am trying figure out if there is a bit of a consensus on tools and machinery that most could agree would be "essential" to a newbie like me. I have a neighbor who is a mechanical engineer, and he has a nice metal shop and CNC machine. He told me that he has a disassembled machine in his attic that is multi-purpose - that he would donate to my shop. He mentioned that it is (at least) both a drill press and a table saw but does some other things too. I have never heard of this and have no idea if it is suitable for what I need.

Some things seem obvious to me, and it may pay for me to do my basic millwork at the other shop. I could use their table saw, band saw, thickness planer, jointer and scroll saw - but I would like to be able to work in my own place and at my own pace - without having to run to their shop all the time.

So the question for the builders is - knowing the above - what equipment do you feel is essential to a basic bass building workshop?

Please comment or discuss if you see fit...And THANKS, in advance.

If your neighbor.has a Shopsmith, take it, especially if it has all or even most of the accessories.

Drill press
Bandsaw
Hand router
Hand sander
Belt sander
Good set of wood chisels
Vacuum Cleaner
Surface Planer (optional)

 

[stevecaronna]

I found this site to be very informative. [Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
This guy builds a lot of his own tools because when you are making and fixing guitars sometimes you don't know what kind of tool you are going to need until you get into it and find that what you thought should be a common tool is just a little off and you have to modify it. I have made a lot of tools myself, like a drum sander and a plunge router table along with my work bench. It looks you will have plenty room to house all of the templates you will make for each kind of pickup you will use and neck pocket for the different size necks you will make just to name a few.
Good luck to you and keep us up on the steps to getting your shop up and running.

 

[static0verdrive]

You can always do what my friend did and cheat a little at the start - get your basic tools like drill press, router, router table, table saw, jig saw, and spindle sander for body stuff and just buy pre-made necks until you're able to get all the fretting and neck tools you need to make necks too...

 

[Rodent]

I started back in 2004 with an early 60's ShopSmith, a slippery Craftsman router, and a few clamps. Today the shop utilizes three CNC machines, a laser cutter, and a host of heavy duty woodworking tools.

My thoughts on the ShopSmith:

- there is one thing it does very well that is difficult to reproduce without a few jigs and a large drillpress: drilling side jack holes with a Forstner bit. the ability to raise/lower the table to perfectly center the bit on the body edge and then drill it on the horizontal is quite nice

- I've owned most all of the specialty attachments (jointer, bandsaw, etc ...) and can say from a lutherie perspective they're far too expensive and designed for much lighter duty work than what we do even as an occasional weekend hobbyist.

- for a lot less money, you can get way better REAL tools on Craigslist by being patient and doing your research


My thoughts on what tools to get to start out IF you're sure you want to do woodworking as a serious hobby:

- a solid 14" bandsaw that has the option of adding a 6" riser block so you can re-saw 8" wide top sets. if you get more serious in your woodworking, you'll soon regret having skimped on this tool. I regretted my 'frugality' twice before finally purchasing a 14" Powermatic with 6" riser block. The Powermatic has been serving me well for close to 10 years now, and is showing no signs of slowing down. I also purchased a larger Laguna bandsaw that is dedicated to resawing top sets, giving me the flexibility to utilize different blades on the Powermatic as the job calls for without messing with the fine-tuned setup on the resaw saw.

- a variable speed router that's at least 1.5HP and has the ability to adjust the cutting depth with a fine adjust. I get by without a plunge router, but that's just my workflow. you'll use this more than your bandsaw, so find one that is comfortable to use and is easy to change bits.

- dust collection: if you run a bandsaw, you need dust collection. check the CFM needed by your bandsaw, and buy the next size (or two) larger dust collector. a roll-around unit will be perfect until you grow to the place where you want a fixed unit ducted to all your tool stations.

- drill press: Bruce noted what you need to look for

- clamps are your next financial money pit, and you'll quickly discover that you'll always be 1 or 2 clams short of what you need to do right then and there. I like Bessey, but also have great fondness for Jet
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- next on my list would be a solid Jointer (or Jointer/Planer if you have the $$) for when your budget opens up. you have a couple different ways to go here, so think thru what you plan to do 3-5 years from now. IF you want to keep at it as a hobbyist, Inca made a great Jointer/Planer unit that works well for the small shop and has options that run on 120v. if you want something a bit more heavy duty, brands such as Rockwell and Jet have several options that will get you a solid jointer with cast iron feed bads. Jet also makes a great Jointer/Planer hybrid that swaps between the two tasks quickly and accurately. I've had one of these in my shop for a while and love it. if you have the $$$$, adding a helical head cutter will allow you to work figured woods with less tearout.

- and to round it out I'd consider a good drum sander like the 16-22 Performax unit (or similar sized offering from Delta)


Beyond this there are sanders, rasps, spokeshaves, sharpening stones, router table, and an endless number of specialty tools you can buy or make. a tablesaw isn't high on my priority list, and I got by for over a decade without one.

 

[T_Bone_TL]

Bessey clamps are awesome - my dad has those. I need to spend some time over there cleaning his clamps though, the threads are all full of glue, every time I use them I have to spend a half hour cleaning them up. It seems he uses them at the extremes of their travel more often than I do. I need to spend more time with the jorgensen clamps - keeping the jaws parallel has always been a challenge for me.

...That's a feature, as they say in the software world. Parallel is one of many options, and sometimes not the best option for the job.

Number of clamps - more old workshop advice - you can never have too many clamps.

Cam/bar clamps are nice if you like to make your own tools.
Image from a rather busy (in the too much crap other than content sense) webpage at: Invalid Link Removed

 

[Hopkins]

Personally, I am not a huge fan of the Shopsmith. Tools that do everything tend to do nothing well.

@Bruce Johnson hit the nail on the head with his post. You can do just about everything you need to do with a band saw, drill press, and especially a router. Those are the three most important power tools a builder has in his arsenal. I've been building for a long time and have never once needed a table saw for building instruments. I do use my radial arm saw often for cutting fret slots, which can be done on a table saw or by hand as well.

 

[Gard]

+1 piece of gear that should be top priority is a good fire detection and suppression system. Ask Brubaker and Roscoe are two that i know of who had fires in their shops.

Well...I think you may have confused us with Dingwall? We haven't ever had a shop fire (knocking on every piece of wood I can find....I know how lucky we are!) I know both Kevin and Sheldon went through some pretty rough patches with fire. Oh, and Wish Bass, who is over in Winston-Salem, NC - kinda our next door neighbor (we're in Greensboro, about 20 minutes east). Steve W. had a pretty nasty fire about a year ago, maybe that is it?

In any event, I agree on the detection/suppression thing - fire is not your friend in a woodshop.

 

[bearhart74]

Well...I think you may have confused us with Dingwall? We haven't ever had a shop fire (knocking on every piece of wood I can find....I know how lucky we are!) I know both Kevin and Sheldon went through some pretty rough patches with fire. Oh, and Wish Bass, who is over in Winston-Salem, NC - kinda our next door neighbor (we're in Greensboro, about 20 minutes east). Steve W. had a pretty nasty fire about a year ago, maybe that is it?

In any event, I agree on the detection/suppression thing - fire is not your friend in a woodshop.

Damn.. sorry bout the mistake Gard.

 

[Gard]

Damn.. sorry bout the mistake Gard.

No worries, Bear - I'm just glad it WASN'T us, as much as I'm sad about the other guys (Sheldon and Kevin are both good friends) having gone through those experiences.