Shop Tools for Guitar Making
Any woodworking shop will have a certain amount of vises, clamps, bench hooks and shooting boards, that almost feel like part of the shop. These tools are not particular to guitar making per se, but there are certain types of these tools that lend themselves to building guitars. These are the tools referred to here as guitar making shop tools. These tools can be found in virtually all shops in one form or another. The bench hooks and shooting boards you can make yourself. In this way they can be designed and built for a particular purpose. Download plans for a bench hook and shooting board free. See details at bottom of page.
Vises and Clamps
Holding devices such as vises and clamps are indispensable in guitar making. There are many types of vices available and I have a few different types in the shop. Specialized vises make certain tasks easier while minimizing damage from clamping pressure. A few types of useful vises are the universal vise, the pattern makers vise, and any small portable vise. The universal vise in my shop is mounted on a stand and used to hold the solera which provides access all the way around the fixture. The pattern makers vise will hold anything with a taper very well and may be rotated 360 degrees. It is invaluable when carving the heel, shaping the neck and setting up the instrument. The small portable vise is extremely useful for cutting small diameter round stock such as the brass registration pins, and shaping the nut and saddle. It can also be used to drill the string holes in the bridge and to notch the fan braces to fit over the bridge patch. A vacuum clamp although unnecessary is a real luxury. This type of clamp works well to hold the body of the guitar while providing unimpeded access all the way around.
Clamps are an absolute necessity and you can never have too many of them. This is a list of clamps necessary for making the guitar in my guitar making book:
- 16 - 8" Clamps with 4"throat
- 16 - 4" clamps with a 2 1/2" throat
- 8 - 8" Cam clamps with an 8" throat
- 8 - 8" Cam clamps with a 4" throat
- 12 - 2" Hand clamps
- 6 - 4" Hand clamps
Bench Tools
There are a couple of helpful bench tools which can be easily made that are used on the workbench for a number of operations; they are the bench hook and the shooting board. The bench hook is used to square an edge (make one edge perpendicular to another) of any material that can be hand planed. The material to be planed is held perpendicular by the stop fence and the plane is slid along the ramp. The cleat on the bottom edge keeps everything from sliding around.
The shooting board is very much the same thing as the bench hook only it is longer and it can be used to flatten the edge on a long piece of stock, or thickness a small piece of wood that would otherwise be difficult to hold in a bench vice as shown at right. The cleat on the bottom surface of the shooting board fits into the bench vise and the stop fence keeps the work piece from moving it is planed. There is no ramp in this case, the plane slides along the bench. If you don't have access to a jointer a shooting board will be necessary to joint an edge straight.
Both of these shop aids are easy to make and use. An edge that is planed is a much smoother edge than any edge which is machined. The machine is used to perform most of the heavy work; the rest is done with hand tools. Any cut made is always cleaned up one or both of these luthier bench tools.
Bench Hook and Shooting Board Plans - Available FREE!
Download Plans (PDFs) for the bench hook and shooting board free. These full color plans (PDFs) come in a zip file. Unzip the file, and the drawings are in a folder called Shop Tools. These plans can be printed on 8 1/2 x 14 piece of paper.
