tools for a new builder: hand, stationary, or CNC?

[Bob Hammond]

There's a current thread where a hobbyist-builder is looking for ideas to build a small shop. Mostly it's about the structure of the place, but some respondents have advised that a CNC mill is the 'tool of choice' for the smallest shop because it can be used to accomplish many/most tasks that have been done by previous hand and 'limited-use' power tool techniques.

I agree that a modern CNC mill can do many tasks, but I'm not convinced that it's best for a small builder. I think that a CNC is great for production work to produce parts for 'de novo' assembly, and to shove factory instruments out the door, and they're great to produce exact replacement parts for those specific types of instruments. But what would happen when a one-man shop is faced with repairwork, on an assembled instrument that was built by himself or by another manufacturer? How can a CNC mill be used efficiently, to disassemble an instrument and finesse the manufacture and fitting of parts that match perfectly? I think that's something that is better learned by handwork experience.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a handtool purist. I just think that time that is spent to learn handtool techniques (and about limited-use stationary tools) is a good investment for a hobbyist/newbie, and better than a CNC.

What do you think?

[Brad Heinzen]

I suppose it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. For me, the point is to become a better luthier, not a better machine operator. I'm not against machining centers, and one of my prior jobs involved doing CNC programming in a cabinet shop. The whole point of what we did in that shop was to process a lot of material as quickly and accurately as possible. As a guitar builder, that's very much not my goal, and I'm with you when it comes to developing skills with handtools. I'm also not a big fan of the brute force methodology that machining centers can encourage.

[Andy Birko]

I'm a CNC guy and love it but, I'd never advise someone who's "just tooling up" for luthiery to go for one. Learning to program and run a CNC well is an art in itself and is something a lot of people struggle with. For a one man outfit to thrive with a CNC you have to be an expert at CAD, an expert in CAM and an expert in milling wood with a CNC router. Add that to being a luthier and you can imagine the struggle. In my experience, there are a significant number of folks who stumble and have a difficult time with one of the steps mentioned above and it puts the breaks on the whole process. If you can't draw your neck/headstock blend in CAD, you can't machine it.

The other big hurdle is the cost. Prices have come down tremendously for low end CNC machines but just the software for a setup that's useful for luthiery is going to start at nearly $2k and go up from there. You can buy quite a few stationary tools for that price.

For the work I do, the CNC machine is fantastic. I can go from a napkin sketch of something to a part often in just a few hours. I can achieve a level of accuracy with this machine that I simply couldn't by hand but, I also have special needs the typical guitar maker doesn't have. I build banduras and even the simplest bandura needs over 150 accurately drilled holes! Having done that by hand many times, it's not fun. The instrument I'm designing now will have a key change mechanism and I'm anticipating somewhere on the order of about 400 to 600 accurately drilled holes and for the mechanism to actually work, they need to be perfect!

So to summarize, I don't think that a CNC machine should be at the top of a list of tools for a new shop. Even with a CNC machine you still need something to size and flatten stock. A CNC machine might very well be one of the last tools one buys though because of how much you can do with it.

[Bob Hammond]

Andy, I was hoping that you might offer some useful comments about CNC machines. I think that CNC and the nascent art of 3D printing machines will change the way that people think about building musical instruments, and by that I mean the not only the mechanics of building them -- it's also about what might be possible to build. I'd say that Art drives technology, and technology makes new forms of Art possible. There is a big future for CNC techniques, but for now the Learning Curve is very steep and expensive for most instrument builders who are likely capable of building exceptional instruments by 'traditional' techniques.

For myself today, I'm trying to develop a technique, about how to figure out about how to cut slots for frets for a unique scale. I've found a japanese razor saw at HF that will be useful (0.024" kerf @ $9 cost ) Right now, I'm figuring out about how to make a jig that makes the best use of the tool and my ability to apply it. This will take time and experimentation for me to do that, but I think that I'll figure out how to do it, and in a useful amount of time. That's the fun of it, for me.

[Nicholas Blanton]

Hand tools cost less than big machine tools, no doubt. Good hand skills and hand tools give you an enormous amount of flexibility, and there are some things that machines can't do- like inlay purfling on a fiddle-so if you have those skills you can be hard to replace. And that is a concern, with CNC machines, as well as the cost; if you do something with a CNC machine , it can be done somewhere else with a CNC machine and, possibly, by somebody who owns a lot of CNC machines and has employees willing to run the machines for less food than you.

That said, there are some tasks that the CNC machine can do much better and faster; you just have to think carefully about where to draw the line, where you need to stop thinking about production and think about flexibility. For example, it's nice to have hammered dulcimer hammers be the same weight and size, since people play with two. Getting blanks cut by CNC or with a laser makes a lot more sense than careful cutting to a line with a fretsaw, over and over. So, I get that done, and it's done in fraction of the time I could do it.. But I leave the glue up and shaping of the grips to be done by hand, because that gives me lots of flexibility as to how they look and feel. If I got caught up in economies of scale, I would try to have the entire hammer done by CNC. But I like the flexibility more. I mean, I could likely find a 5-axis CNC router that could generate the complex curves, and I could make changes digitally; but those changes would still be harder to make.

You also have to think about inertia, having the process drive your design too much. If you have a fiddle, say, that takes 200 hours to make, the 4 hours doing the purfling seems OK. If you have a CNC machine somehow producing a whole fiddle, in the white, in one day, the 4 hours spent doing the purfling suddenly seem waay too excessive. You'll tend to try to stop doing the purfling.

[Clay Schaeffer]

I think CNC machines are cool tools. But most power tools used for custom lutherie are just used to rough form and thickness parts. They remove some of the drudgery but seldom yield a finished part. If you are building guitars on a "bell curve" as some of the factories seem to do "all machine work" parts become more practical.

[Nick Middleton]

My take on CNC's are the same I tell people who decide on power-tools vs hand-tools.

A power-tool in the hands of a novice will only help them make a mistake faster! If you don't know how to drill a straight-hole: a power-drill will help you make a sloppy-hole faster. If you can't saw a straight-line: a circular-saw will help you cut a crooked-line faster. If you don't know how to level-sand by hand: a power-sander will help you make a nice wavy-surface in a hurry.

You get the idea. I recommend you learn with smaller-tools and get a feel for "luthiery" so you know what you're telling a machine to replicate in a faster, more repeatable fashion.

Get familiar with a router. Get comfortable with how much material you can route-off/out with it. A CNC will just be a bigger version of that so knowing how much you can handle with a piece of wood by hand will help judge what's fair for a machine to do.

[Don Williams]

Like Andy, I have a CNC that I've been using for a couple of years now. Mostly I'm doing work for others, but more recently I've had an opportunity to use it for some of my own work. There are things it can do that are very cool, and it would take a master craftsman to achieve the same results. There are other things where it is a complete waste of time to write the code and then perform a simple operation that could have been done by hand a lot faster. It's not a perfect solution to every woodworking scenario. It's a great tool for inlay work, whether you're talking pearl in a headplate or fretboard, or something else. I recently started using it for the production of my Smiley-Uke's (TM) and found that I can do some of the work infinitely faster and better than before, and the result is both better looking and sounding. But I also had a lot of CAD experience going in, and I got into cnc for a few reasons.
The first was that I was simply bored and need a project, so I built one. The second was that I was always terrified of screwing up a guitar neck by carving too much or not getting things straight or plumb, or whatever. And I have messed up my share of necks...
The other reason was I wanted to make a Backgammon board and I couldn't figure an easier way to make the triangles than using a CNC. The final reason, and the most important of them all was that I was starting to develop issues with my elbows, repetitive stress type of issues, and I really wanted to save my body the wear and tear of some operations over time. I want to build instruments well into my old age (I won't say "retirement" since it's unlikely that I ever will) and my health has to be there in order to do that.

Now, building it was fun, but also a lot of work, and not cheap. I have yet to produce a real neck on one, although I've had some minor success with some test samples in poplar. The first couple times I tried it with Mahogany, I screwed them up...as if the luthery gods had no desire to let me succeed at it. The backgammon board has yet to be made as well.

CNC is a tool, nothing more, nothing less. Junk in, junk out. It still relies on your skill and planning, and your attention to details.

So if someone wants to complain that a guitar or a ukulele that I built has CNC'd parts, I simply say:

"I made the designs, drew the drawings, and wrote the code that allowed a machine to make certain parts to a certain point....but I also made the machine".

That usually shuts them up.

As to learning to build with hand tools and power tools vs a cnc...... definitely learn without a CNC. Learn, hone your skills, and if you should want one someday for good reasons, than get one, or build one. Better to learn the skills first.

OH....BTW...if y'all haven't seen the work Andy Burko is doing with his Banduras on his CNC, like his necks, you really should!
Great stuff! I believe he's also taking on some custom work for folks too...if you have the need.

[Bob Garrish]

I think the pre-qualifications of the builder matter a lot here. If the builder was an engineer, a draftsman, or a math person then I'd say CNC is a great way to go because they'll have an easy time acquiring the skills to make it do what they want it to. They'll also be able to let it take a lot of the repetitive motion learning and coordination out of making a good product. They'd be able to make a program faster than they could make a jig.

If the builder is coming from a cabinetmaking or carpentry background then they probably have a good intuition with tools and are probably quite effective out of the gate with a bandsaw or router. They'd have the tool skills and the planning ability to just start cutting, and learning software would probably just get in the way. They'd be able to make a jig faster than they could make a program.

For someone without any background in any of this stuff, well, they'd have to figure out what they're best at. It's a dead end trying to put every prospective builder in the same pigeonhole. If you want to see some of the same thing, try watching a machinist and a carpenter building furniture

[Clay Schaeffer]

I have no "beef" against CNC machinery, but I don't think they are the best tools for a novice wood worker. They put a little more distance between the worker and the wood. Things that a wood worker learns about wood by using hand tools are more difficult to observe when using power tools, and even harder to see when using a CNC.

[Arnt Rian]

It seems that most builders and even smaller production shops that have cnc's mostly use them for inlay and some parts production, like necks and fingerboards, maybe neck blocks, kerfed linings etc. To build a guitar, at least an acoustic, that's is a relatively small part of the work, so you are going to need at least some tools in addition to a cnc, even if you decide to get one. With all these people with smaller cnc's offering to do work for others, its easy (and probably a lot cheaper) to have some or all of those parts made to your specifications, instead of buying/building and learning how to operate your own cnc. Its a good idea to know some CAD, of course. An example: I don't find cutting shell very interesting, so I'm quite happy not to have to cut my logo (and a few headstock designs) by hand any more, and just use one that is already inlaid into a veneer (thanks, Don ). Perhaps the instrument loses some of its handmade vibe or whatever, personally I can't really say I feel it matters that much.

[David King]

These are really great questions and I'm interested to see everyone's experience coming to bear on the issues. There are so many levels of CNC capability and computer and software capability and complexity (not to mention expense). CNC used to mean a $120000 bed mill that weighed as much as a truck and required 10 or 12 feet of overhead clearance, a 12" thick reinforced concrete pad not to mention the 440V, 3 phase power, the compressed air and vacuum lines and thousands of dollars in tooling just to make your first cut. Now a serious cnc router can be had for about the same as equipping a wood shop and is capable of doing a great many tasks with stunning precision. I'm sure this trend will continue to slope further in CNC's favor over the coming years to the point with the question may become moot before we know it.

[John Kingma]

I think that going CNC is a logical step for someone who is looking at going "into production" but that would suggest a certain amount of previous experience before making that step. It is mentioned in the original post that this is a hobby builder so I would think its a bit early to be looking at going "into production".

For me, as a hobby builder, using a CNC would be taking the enjoyment out of the process. I like working with hand tools and hand power tools and don't see the point in doing a bunch of set-up work and computer work just to push a button and watch a machine have all the fun.

[Mike Sandor]

I am a machinist by trade and woodworker of 35 plus years. Just recently got into instrument building. ( 4 years and counting.)
Regarding CNC's in general, when the first one hit the shop floor I thought, well there goes the neighborhood. We machinist's are all out of work. These machines can produce parts that a manual machine and operator could never replicate. This technology started new trades, machine operators, not machinist. Tool setters, machine programmers. The doors opened for mechanical engineers and designers as CNC's were now capable to produce just about any thing they could envision. That technology grows day by day. Even the technical schools cranked up the machine operator courses in lou of "machinist's. I am happy to say that I am a old world machinists, hand me a bunch of broken parts and chances are real good I can reverse engineer it and perform all tasks needed to replicate it. Not so with a machine operator. This might sound like I am down on the whole CNC deal, interesting enough, the contrary, I just finished building one. For me it was the challenge of the build, plus the fact I have a pretty well set up machine shop. The reason I wanted one was when I started getting into inlay, I was disappointed in my results. This is the difficulty in being a machinist and woodworker. Always attempting to hold the same tolerances, trying to machine a piece of walnut the same as a piece of aluminum. It will make you crazy. Anyway, back to the CNC, after a initial investment of 1100 bucks in the drives, motors, power supplys, etc, , another approx. 1000 bucks in ball screws and allot of dumpster diving for other hardware, I got this thing up and operating. Yes, you need to understand how to produce a drawing in some sort of AutoCadd format, then import into more software that will convert it to machine code, (G-code), and then finally into the CNC operating computer. You need to understand feed rates and spindle speeds, and clamping technics. But when you finally get it together, and you cut your first head stock logo, it is a real sense of accomplishment. I can see allot of ways to use this for guitar building. But is it a tool you MUST have. Absolutely not. Is it cool? Yes. Can it save time, replicate multiple parts quickly? Yes. Can it carve a neck profile? Sure, perfectly! But it will never give me the same satisfaction I get when taking a band saw, rasp, and allot of elbow work and whittle one out by hand. A CNC definitely has it's place, maybe in your shop! The cost of purchasing a good size machine is still substantial, but coming down every day. The real question is do you have a use for it? I have made enough logos with my CNC to last me quite a while, I need to get back to building guitars................

[Mario Proulx]

The reason I wanted one was when I started getting into inlay, I was disappointed in my results. This is the difficulty in being a machinist and woodworker. Always attempting to hold the same tolerances, trying to machine a piece of walnut the same as a piece of aluminum. It will make you crazy.

That, right there, is why CNC is WRONG for a new wannabe luthier.

Turning to a robot to accomplish a task(s), instead of honing one's skills will not lead to better instruments, because every part you machine or produce on the CNC will eventually be tied-into a whole of parts made with hand, or hand guided, tools, and at some point, likely the beginning, you'll seek to make more and more of the parts with the robot because it is making "nicer" parts than --you-- can. Of course it will; it is better than you at making cuts and parts, and you lack the basic skills, and will never get better at them because you gave up and assigned the tougher ones to a machine.

Larry Robinson, for example, hand-cut and inlaid every single piece of the one millionth Martin(and of course, many others, but let's use that one for an example). If Larry had turned to CNC when he started creating inlays, would he have been able to accomplish this feat? No way!! Could a CNC accomplish this feat? Maybe not, since he inlaid every part of that guitar, including the sides, so it would have been a helluva trick in itself to set up a CNC to cut the cavities in at least some of the surfaces.

But bottom line is, it is bad practice to turn to a major crutch to overcome your skills when first starting out; you're only assuring that you'll never get better..... I'm not against CNC at all; wish I had the skills to program one, because I'd likely own one, then. But a CNC for a new builder? Never!

[Bob Hammond]

These are all very interesting comments. I wonder if comments about the nascent 3D printer technology will appear.

[Steve Senseney]

Following Mario's comments--

Specifically with inlay, as I did my first pearl work, I was not very slick or sophisticated. As I used my Jewelers's saw, and gained skills, my inlay improved.

I am glad that I have gained design, and execution skills. If had moved to a CNC initially, I don't know what I would have as far as inlay ability.

If I had a CNC, I would certainly use it. However, I am quite comfortable with many hand tools, which can do many of the complex sophisticated jobs quicker than I could with a CNC.

[Seth Ellis]

So my machine of choice is a used Shop Smith. It gives me a drill press with 4" travel. Table saw. Lathe. 12" disc. And can take a jointer, small band saw, and other addons. I purchased it for $450 and brought it home in my Honda Civic. If I had more room, I'd love a 3-phase cabinet saw and a resaw bandsaw, but for me it was a good first floor tool.

I think CNC for a hobby builder is ridiculous. Where's the fun in that? It's fun to watch in a production line, but that's not the point when building hand built guitars.

[David King]

I love to hand build guitars but I also live in a marketplace where very few are willing to pay me to take my time. There is a limit to how much faster I can do things by hand and get the accuracy and repeatability I'd expect. If all of my direct competitors have CNCs it's going to be hard for me to compete. I'd love to work in a shop that ran on steam power or had only hand tools but if I can't keep up and make a living at what I know how to do then I'm back to washing dishes at the corner diner. It's not a new world I relish but I'm not quite ready to give it all up and retire either.

I bet in ten years no one here will be asking if it makes sense for a beginner to start with a cnc. Do we think any less of a writer if they use a computer over pen and ink? It's just another tool. I don't disagree with Mario that in a perfect world the consumer would be willing to pay extra for the hand-cut inlay. Unfortunately I don't have time to argue with my potential customers on whether the cnc carved solidbody guitar will sound better than the hand carved one. Just as it's getting harder every day to argue that the Chinese factory can't make a better product than the American one. We call this progress, we may not like it but we don't really have a choice.

[Mario Proulx]

In that case, we need to change the title of this thread to"

"Tools for the new assembler; hand, stationary, or CNC?"