MIMF

I had previously thought that there were no guitar making courses within commuting distance of my house and I had resolved to teach myself from books for the moment. However, I have discovered a course which is just about doable in terms of distance from my house. I just wanted to run it by you mimfers and get some opinions on the cost / benefits of it etc.

The course is run on a one weekend per month basis with the total number of days spent learning totaling about 12 (depending on individual progress). Each day starts at 09:30am and finishes at 17:00pm with a break for lunch (which is included in the price). By the end students will have completed a classical guitar made with "the finest selected and certified tonewoods and hardwoods". There will be a limit of 8 students.

The total cost,including materials, is roughly €1400 ($1835 USD or £1192 GBP). My questions are:

1) Is it realistic to expect to have completed a decent classical guitar after 12 days of tuition / work?
2) Is this a reasonable price for what is being offered? Seems reasonable to me.
3) Would I be better off spending the money on equipment / tonewood and continue with my plan to teach myself.

Here's my opinion, surely there will be others...
1. Yes, I think it is reasonable. I assume that it does not include any kind of finishing though. Also see answer to #2 below.
2. Off-hand, yes. But there are many variables here as to the quality of instruction, materials and tools. And also, what is furnished. You should ask exactly what parts will be supplied already done e.g., you will probably not be making the rosette, maybe the neck will be already done, and the front and back already glued up, bridge made, sides bent, etc.
3. "It depends". If you have a good teacher and it's not run like a production shop, you can definitely learn a lot in a short amount of time.

I would *definitely* ask for references from former students.

Charlie Schultz wrote: I assume that it does not include any kind of finishing though.

You're right. They give you some advice / instruction on finishing but it is left for you to do in your own time and using a method of your choice.

2. Off-hand, yes. But there are many variables here as to the quality of instruction, materials and tools. And also, what is furnished. You should ask exactly what parts will be supplied already done e.g., you will probably not be making the rosette, maybe the neck will be already done, and the front and back already glued up, bridge made, sides bent, etc.

Good point. I'll have to find out.

3. "It depends". If you have a good teacher and it's not run like a production shop, you can definitely learn a lot in a short amount of time.

On the production shop issue: I do know that they use an outside mold of some sort and a heat blanket to bend the sides, so there is no tuition in, or opportunity to use, a bending iron.

Hi Ciaran, here's my view for what it's worth. £1200 for 90 hours tuition is about £13 per hour, quite cheap imo but you also have to consider the costs and time of travelling, which from your question seems as if it might be quite significant. The resources available to you online (especially of course the MIMF!!) will be an enormous help, and Youtube has masses of information that you can utilise. I would also seek out any luthiers local to you and seek their advice , in my experience most of them are only too happy to share. I dreamed of making guitars in my teens, built my first at age 50 and now at 62 have made 6, none of them particularly good, but their owners (I gave most of them away) seem happy enough and I have enjoyed the experience. £1200 will buy you some good quality tools which will serve you well when when you start your subsequent guitars (yes, you will!!) including if you wish a Fox style bender and heating blanket, although a bending iron will be a fraction of the price and you WILL get the hang of it eventually. I wish you every success in your endeavours as you start your journey into the wonderful world of luthiery.
Sorry, I am completely inept with computers and do not know how to post a link, but if you search Youtube for"Steve Brown- Parisienne walkways" you can see the guitar I built for my nephews 18th birthday, I think this was number 5. Any comments or constructive criticism welcome.

Dave Gibbon wrote:Hi Ciaran, here's my view for what it's worth. £1200 for 90 hours tuition is about £13 per hour, quite cheap imo but you also have to consider the costs and time of travelling, which from your question seems as if it might be quite significant. The resources available to you online (especially of course the MIMF!!) will be an enormous help, and Youtube has masses of information that you can utilise. I would also seek out any luthiers local to you and seek their advice , in my experience most of them are only too happy to share. I dreamed of making guitars in my teens, built my first at age 50 and now at 62 have made 6, none of them particularly good, but their owners (I gave most of them away) seem happy enough and I have enjoyed the experience. £1200 will buy you some good quality tools which will serve you well when when you start your subsequent guitars (yes, you will!!) including if you wish a Fox style bender and heating blanket, although a bending iron will be a fraction of the price and you WILL get the hang of it eventually. I wish you every success in your endeavours as you start your journey into the wonderful world of luthiery.
Sorry, I am completely inept with computers and do not know how to post a link, but if you search Youtube for"Steve Brown- Parisienne walkways" you can see the guitar I built for my nephews 18th birthday, I think this was number 5. Any comments or constructive criticism welcome.

Thanks for your thoughts Dave. I found that video of Steve Brown playing the guitar you made for your nephew. Your obviously not inept at lutherie. That's a nice guitar and beautifully played at that. I'm a bit confused though. It seems quite compact like a classical but sounds brighter than a classical, like it's a got steel strings. Perhaps it's just the sound quality. Anyway, it's nice to actually hear a guitar made by a mimfer as opposed to just looking at photos. As for constructive criticism, I'll leave that to the more experienced than me. Thanks for the good wishes and encouragement.

I learned to make guitars by reading the MIMF and using Cumpiano and Natelson.

I am good with tools and have wood working experience.

Any experience and background you have in wood working, making and using tools, and finishing will be a good start for building guitars.

I did not have access to any schools (distance, time and my day job prevented me from pursuing this option), so I got help here on the MIMF and proceeded to make mistakes and learn.

If you have some back ground, the school and teach you the finer points of guitar design and building.

If you need training in wood, tools and finishing, you will spend more of your time in the course learning basic information rather than advanced information.

I always gain insight into methods and techniques if I look at someone's shop, or even pictures that are posted on the MIMF. It is nice to have direct contact with an experienced builder.

There is always more than one way to accomplish any task, and you will have to choose.

Until you make a decision, I would suggest you start building something that is like a guitar! The first is always special, meaning we all made mistakes and learned a lot from them.

Don't hesitate to ask for advice from the MIMF community.

It sounds reasonable to me. If all the building jigs are ready to go, the tools and machines are set up, and the materials are milled roughly to size, you could easily complete a decent guitar within the time frame mentioned. I suspect that you'll all have to build more or less the same guitar, and that each person or two might be working on different parts at any given time, ie. a couple of you bracing tops, a couple people bending sides, a couple of people carving necks, etc. The only way to avoid that is to have 8 go-bar decks, 8 bending forms, etc.

You'll likely get more out of it if you already have some woodworking background, so that you're not having to learn how to do basic stuff at the same time you're learning about building guitars. The most important body of knowledge that you might not get out of the class is how to make the various workboards and jigs that you'll need to build on your own. If you're building on a solera, learning to build the solera and outside molds could be a one-day class all by itself. Even so, going through the whole process start to finish can really give you a jumpstart on learning to build on your own.

If the course is good, that is very good value. You will not find a cheaper course anywhere else. The only question you need to ask is how much experience has the person got who is leading the course. If the person has adequate experience you cannot go wrong at that price. Until you build an instrument you cannot know what tools you will need. You will inevitably buy tools which you never use. If you buy tools based on what you think you need before you actually make an instrument you will buy lots of useless stuff.

Simon Magennis wrote: You will inevitably buy tools which you never use. If you buy tools based on what you think you need before you actually make an instrument you will buy lots of useless stuff.

This is one of the issues I'm struggling with. What tools to buy and when? I have two books on building an acoustic guitar and they both have extensive lists of the tools "required". It's not always clear just how necessary some of these tools are and at what stage of the process they will be needed. I suspect that many of the tools that appear in the lists prepared by the master luthiers who wrote these books, have "become necessary" to them but are not actually necessary.

Any help on the tools issue would be greatly appreciated. What tools do I need to get started. What will I need to buy in the future at what stage of the process?

Buy the tools when you need them. Don't try to anticipate every future tool use or you will end up with a full shop...damhikt.

Each of "us" have their own story of how they started. I was visiting the old north street factoy in nazareth, and contemplating a "kit". Really doable at $400. I was still hesitant and was sold some factory seconds, neck, fingerboard, top sides and back. Bought "the book" and never looked back. Twelve guitars (and years) later feel like an old hand ( still learning ).
Now with youtube and forums like mimf i feel taking a course really not the best approach. Do not expect to learn it all in one course. Guitar making is skill that builds with each passing month/year.
My advice, buy a kit either from stew mac or martin, will be a great primer.

Hi Ciaran, I'm building my first classical guitar at the moment using Bogdanovich's video.

A local woodworking store offers a very similar course to the one you are considering. The course builds a steel string guitar on 12 Saturdays (I think tuition was $1200 CDN), with six students. I almost signed up for the course, but eventually backed out and have built a guitar on my own. I think there's some factors to consider:

1. How many guitars do you intend to build? If only one, then will you be happy with the guitar offered in the course? You won't have time to customize your guitar during an intense course.

2. What is your budget? The course included use of all the tools. This adds up if you want to build your own guitar at home, even if you minimize purchase of specialized tools. Of course, 1400 pounds is a lot of money for tuition - but you will learn some things that are just plain difficult to pick up from books or video instruction.

3. Do you work well under pressure? A 12 day build is pretty intense. No doubt the instructor will teach you quite a bit on how to recover from mistakes - not only your mistakes, but also the mistakes of the other students; a pretty valuable lesson.

4. Can you ensure you'll be there for all 12 Saturdays (I couldn't, that's why I backed out of the course, plus I wanted to build a cutaway classical guitar not a steel string).

5. What are your woodworking skills? I'm a pretty good woodworker, so I would do well at either a course or home based build. If you don't have much woodworking skill I would go for the course.

6. The local course originally had all six students building the guitar at the same time. This caused backlogs at critical points - such as there was only one side bender for all six students. They now stagger student entry so that each student is at a different stage of the build. They say this works much better for them. It also lets them extend the course (for a fee) if a student is particularly slow - eg. the student might take 15 weeks instead of 12.

I've seen one of the guitars built in the course. It was quite nice and sounded great. I'd say the guy building the guitar had average "fine" woodworking skills, but has lots of commercial woodworking experience building high end doors, etc. He ended up taking the guitar to a luthier for a professional set-up, as his original fret job was of marginal quality. He had some "design features" such as an inlay in the top caused by a big ding that could not be repaired. If you were building the guitar at home, you probably would have made a new top - but the guitar sounded great and was visually quite acceptable unless you're a nitpicky perfectionist like me.

On the other hand, I found the Bogdanovich video gives excellent instruction, supplemented by numerous books and internet advice, and anyone with good woodworking skills would not have trouble building their first guitar. It's taken me almost a year to build the guitar, and I've spent more quite a bit more than the $1200 tuition on videos, wood, and tools.

There has been a lot of good advice offered, which of it will work best for you? At this point you probably can't answer that very well, so you will get to ponder and mull over the ideas to sort out the best for you.

I can only reiterate the advice to get woodworking skills first. That sort of experience is the foundation of your intended venture. You must become familiar with woodworking tools, their maintenance, and care or you will be headed for much frustration and "reinventing the wheel" sort of thing.

One very important fact about any school is that you will get from the experience proportional to the effort you out into it. It's work, so if you want to have a hobby you can do it when it feels good or not, but if you intend to earn a living at it you will have to buckle down and do a lot of work. Milling, carving, sanding, fitting, gluing, etc. is all work and should be done in an efficient and workman like manner. It is WORK, and you get out of it according to what you put into it, and that especially includes the attitude you bring to the work. You can make it joy or you can make it hell, it depends on your attitude. Whatever you do with this I hope you do it well.

Michael Lewis wrote:T..... but if you intend to earn a living at it you will have to buckle down and do a lot of work. Milling, carving, sanding, fitting, gluing, etc. is all work and should be done in an efficient and workman like manner. It is WORK, and you get out of it according to what you put into it, and that especially includes the attitude you bring to the work......

Well said. In Germany there is still the traditional apprenticeship/training system. You do 3 or more years doing training as you work. If you pass the test you work for another number of years and get additional training along the way. After 5 to 7 years you may feel able to do the "master craftsman" exam which enables you to set up on your own. The exam lasts 3 days apparently and you have to produce a "masterpiece" as well. Tobias Berg (http://www.rodgers-tuning-machines.co.u ... uitar.html) recounts that he worked in about 4,500 guitars while working for Lakeland guitars here in Germany over about 6 years. A master builder here told me that the lower grade production guitars in Germany need to be done and ready to sell with 5 hours labour. A guitar that costs 800 euros in the shops is about 640 excluding vat. The shop will take about half of that and there may be a distributor in the middle. So it has to be profitable for the factory about about 250-350 euros depending on how they are selling it. I saw Spanish guitars at the Frankfurt music fair last week with prices starting about 140 Euros and really good ones with recommended retail prices from about 400 up. That is seriously hard and skilled work. On some forums people dismiss such instruments but when you consider the work involved, it is amazing that such businesses can survive. I have huge respect for professional instrument makers whether they produce the bread and butter line of products or top end "star" instruments. To survive and make a living in this business is an amazing achievement. And even more amazing is how friendly and helpful people are despite these challenges.

For what it's worth, here's my photo essay of a (2 week) class I took with William Cumpiano: https://picasaweb.google.com/1169574854 ... pianoClass#

"For what it's worth . . ."!!!!!!!!!! Charlie, that is a great photo essay! That is a serious study of making a classical guitar! Very detailed and in depth examples of how to do everything. Very impressive.

It depends entirely on the quality of the teacher. If it's an excellent teacher, then the price is cheap. There is so much you can learn from someone, IF they are a person worth learning from.

So, how do we advise you on whether it's a good person?

I have to echo what everyone else is saying.

I'd read a ton of books and was a MIMF junkie from 2003-2011.
I've built a number of guitars (not great ones), and visited different shops: Rick Turner, Kenny Hill, Ervin Somogyi, Michi Matsuda, etc, etc, etc.

More recently, I got serious.
I started apprenticing under Randall Angella (although, I'm on hiatus due to work).
It's incredibly eye opening to see the details he puts into everything.

If your teacher is any good, take the class.
I wish that I started out with Randy years ago.

Charlie Schultz wrote:For what it's worth, here's my photo essay of a (2 week) class I took with William Cumpiano: https://picasaweb.google.com/1169574854 ... pianoClass#

Charlie, what is the white centerline stripe in the back?

The centerline on the back of the guitar? It's a single fiber purfling strip.