Acoustic Guitar Making: How to make Tools, Templates, and Jigs Paperback – September 14, 2013

First off - what this is not. This is not a step by step guide and doesn't pretend to be. You need to get some other books for that. It is not everything you need to know. Guitars are complicated and can be and are built in many different ways by different makers. If you already have a lot of the tools for guitar making, the book will be of less value to you. If you are a long time woodworker with a wide range of skills, much of this will be stuff you basically already know, but applied specifically to building guitars. That said, this is a fantastic beginners book with a huge wealth of accumulated knowledge for specifically building guitars. If you are wanting to build your first guitar, this book will save you a lot of money and time (for me more important). I'm an inventor by trade. I've never made a guitar, but I've played for many years and made some very nice things with wood over the years. I've had some ideas on guitar improvements and talked with some companies and found them totally uninterested. Not an unfamiliar occurrence, sadly. I still want to test these ideas, so I plan to do just that. I've found, in a life of building and designing things people have never made, that information is the most important tool to a success in anything; Second in importance is stubborn tenacity. The only way to truly fail at something like this is to quit. Many people do things different ways, but every time you read more about a subject, you will learn something. I like to cook and have a lot of books. Some of them only have maybe 1 recipe that is outstanding, but that makes it worth the price. You can't buy outstanding in most restaurants these days, unless you pay through the nose for it. So, such a dish can save me $300 at a 3 star restaurant and I don't have to go out and pay for the noisy, expensive and pretentious experience I really don't want. I get a fantastic meal with no fuss and I'm not broke at the end of it - and I can feed a bunch of my friends for a fraction of what that one plate would have cost me. Knowledge is not only power, it is money and time. Reinventing the wheel is a huge waste of time. If you are new (and serious) to guitar making, buy and READ this book and several others. You will be glad you did. The instructions for building a cheap wood bending rig are worth more than the price of the book. If you are an old hand at woodworking, you may not get as much out of it, but it might have one recipe you don't know, which could be very valuable to you or not. Unless you read it you will never know and you might be OK with that, too. I think it is a very good selection of very useful information for somebody like myself who has never done this. But, I will be reading quite a few more books before I go wasting my time and nice (and pricey) materials by doing a lousy job. And I know full well that any first time project like this will be a pain. But, the second one will go much faster! Reading is not doing, but it can keep you from making terrible mistakes. I take my hat off to anybody who takes the time to share knowledge. The book is obviously a labor of love and obsession. Thanks for the help!06/11/2020 Update:I've been very busy with other things, but with this crazy virus situation, I've had a bit more time on my hands recently and have been re-reading ALL of my guitar building books. This one still stands out as superb for a beginning luthier. I built a large and very accurate CNC metal milling center in my garage for cutting aluminum prototypes. But, wood is not my most well understood material. The kind of advice that is in this book is well worth the cost of admission. It has a wealth of information. The section explaining some to the sonic consequences of different design choices is particularly useful to me, as I know very little about this and any tips here are good. Anybody who thinks there is nothing of value in this book, I believe, did not actually bother to read it or is already an accomplished luthier, or just boasting to boost their ego. Excellent book! I increased my rating to 5 stars. I've read a few more books now and this one was a bargain and remarkably practical. High value for the price.

The book itself and the information presented is awesome. It is well written and presented in Laymans terms. I am looking forward to setting up my Guitar building bench.Having bought the book used on Amazon, it did arrive with a piece of the cover missing. No problem for me.

I'm a lutherie student just finishing up my first classical guitar build. I have the benefit of in depth instruction on fine wood working and a classical guitar instructor with years of experience and hundreds of builds performed by himself and his students. All told I'm still very much a beginner but I'd like to think I'm off on a much more solid foundation than the average beginner. That said I think this book has much to to teach someone starting out, but may be a little basic for an expert.I also think the title of this book is misleading because it includes a whole lot more than just tools, jigs, and templates. Honestly many of the jigs and tools aren't all that innovative or unusual if you do any kind of web research. What I found most useful were the sections that talked more about techniques and approaches.Before I hit a few highlights be advised that this book is NOT telling you how to build a guitar. Think of it more as a notebook of discoveries, techniques, and ideas that can help you build a guitar. This book is also focused more on steel string construction, though I'd say 85-90% of it can apply to steel or classical.There are tons of photos throughout the book. In many ways you might compare it to Bogdanovich's defining text on classical guitar building, however I think the photo quality isn't nearly as good (all black and white) and don't illustrate all the concepts quite as clearly. You definitely have to read and think through everything much more so than Bog's book.For me I found the following sections useful:- Finishing. A very nice overview of some basic techniques, how they can be used together or separately, and how to apply them. This isn't a comprehensive rundown on finishing but it's a great place for beginners to start. I'm painfully familiar with French polish but I really enjoyed reading alternate techniques.- More advanced neck and fingerboard techniques including binding and laminating- The quick section on inlays. By itself not very helpful in doing inlay, but as a quick overview of what to expect and basic concepts it was helpful.- Some nice theory notes on guitar construction and design. Again steel string focused but I think much would translate to classical- Tips and tricks for basic skills such as gap filling, sanding, gluing, etc. These skills seem simple, but I've really struggled to master some of them. I much appreciated an alternate point of view on these techniques.- And various odds and ends - even a little bit on making your own custom label using online toolsFor the price it's a steal, but you have to consider this a collection of ideas and techniques you can run with. Not as a definitive instruction book.I'm dropping a star just because I was hoping for more on classical guitars, and the photo quality isn't the greatest.

This is really an excellent, up to date and almost comprehensive book on building guitars. All it really lacks is a step by step procedural explanation of what to do 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. so as not to paint yourself in a corner. All the steps are there I think, but not in order. This book is so much more up to date and practical than the other book I have: Guitarmaking, tradition and technology, by Cumpiano and Natelson. That book is comprehensive but was written in the 1980's! They still describe chiseling out the bridge slot instead of routing it! Brian's book is not only up to date but has lots of great ideas on jigs and the use and modification of common modern tools and equipment and local woods instead of the ridiculously expensive tools and materials sold by the luthier supply stores. It also has great info on the theory of how the build affects the sound of the instrument and how to do great finishes at home without expensive spray equipment. His tips on building jigs are great. Before I read this book I was expecting to spend over a grand getting tooled up to make some guitars, now I realize I've got almost everything I need in my shop already and I'll probably only spend a couple hundred dollars for a few odds and ends and luxuries like a dremel with a router plate. This is the best book on technique and theory, materials, finishes and jigs. If Brian just added a chapter on step by step building, it would be quite complete.