Woodworking Hand Tools to Consider
These Hand Tools Will Be Essential In The Construction Of A Guitar
Woodworking Hand Tools are the essentials in the construction of a fine hand-built guitar. In this section we will review which tools you should have and which tools you can put on your wish list and purchase later .
I'm going to assume that the VERY basic tools like hammers, plyers, wire cutters, wrenches etc. are already owned or are very easily accessible. If you don't own these essential tools, consider buying a Combo -Pak that gives you everything is one package. These are available from places like The Home Depot, Lowes, Costco, Truevalue or your local hardware store.
All of the tools and supplies are available in our Store. Also, all Woodworking Hand Tools and Supplies are available from WoodCraft.
Measuring for Lutherie is very critical and you should only buy the best, most accurate measuring devices. I prefer to work in millimeters as they are much easier to read and remember. So buy all your rules and vernier calipers with mm readout options available.
Try square HAVE to be truly square so buy a good on. Use a marking knife when ever you can as this will produce a razor-sharp line to cut or sand to.
Files and Rasps are used for a variety of operations. Consider Rough Rasps for roughing out necks and heels. Cutting a neck to align with an installed fingerboard and knocking down bracing.
The Smooth-Cut Rasps basically smoothen out the wood after the rough cut is done.
Bastard files are used for a variety of operations, but the fine bastard 10" to 12" long will be delegation to leveling frets.
Chisels are used for touchup after rough-out operations and smaller cutting tasks. Use them for shaping glued braces and enlarging grooves and channels. Also they are excellent for excess glue removal from braces glued to the top and back.
Some of the bigger Bench Chisels can be used to hog out quite a bit of wood though, so go carefully with these big boys.
The carver's chisels will come to your rescue for many finely detailed operations, like touchup work and gently trimming braces, trimming down a rosette and touching up wood purfling.
Block planes can be used to cut excess wood from braces, cut down a bridge, and cutting a peghead to shape.
It's hard to imagine what we did before we had these Japanese pull saws available to us. You can use these incredible saws to trim brace ends, flush cut wood parts, accurately cut channels and grooves and many other operations. There are (5) different saws
listed here and you should have each of them.
The Backsaw will be used primarily to cut fret grooves and you should have one of these dedicated only for that use. Teeth should be very fine and have a hardened steel blade.
The Model Makers Razor saw has an extremely fine cut and is well suite for mitering small wood piece such as purfling and wood inlays.
Clamps are an essential part of Woodworking Hand Tools. Clamps are used for virtually every operation. Smaller spring clamps are used for gluing in linings. The Maple Cam Clamps are used for everything from gluing bracing to block etc., due to their deep reach capability.
The deep reach iron clamps are used to reach through the sound hole and glue bridges onto the top of acoustic and classical guitars.
The 4 & 6 Iron Clamps are used for necks, heels, blocks, fingerboards, headstock and many other general operations.
The deepest iron clamps are used for heel gluing, blocks etc. and the bessey are used for long reach operations that other clamps are not capability of making.
Drilling and Drills are a necessary operation in guitar making. Although somewhat limited in capability, we do need some precise drilling operations in guitar construction. With Classical and Acoustic guitar making, the drilling is limited to mostly headstock operations. In electric guitar-making you will utilize drills and bits much more.
I recommend Brad-Point bits over standard drills because they are designed to be used in wood cutting operations and the sharp point or "brad" tip allows precise operation.
The Forstner bits are great for the larger hold requirements that we may have and will give a smooth flat-bottomed hole.
