Posted on July 8, 2022May 22, 2025 by Dale Phillips Quickie Sander Fence Quickie Sander Fence by John Calkin Published online by Guild of American Luthiers, July 2022 Every lutherie shop has jigs hanging around. Often, lots of them. Every sort of stringed instrument is easier and faster to build using good jigs. If you decide that you'd like to build all of the instrument types commonly played in America you will accumulate a serious number of jigs. These days just about all of the most useful jigs can be purchased from a variety of dealers. They are very pretty and often better-made and more useful than a jig we would bother to make in our own shop. Well, prettier, anyhow. If you have entered lutherie in the last fifteen years you may have grown tired of old-timers complaining about this, as if making all of your own jigs was a right of passage that should never be skipped. "In my day we couldn't buy a guitar jig of any kind anywhere! We were lucky to find a book with pictures of guitars, let alone instructions to make them. Huff!" Well, sometimes we need a jig or fixture (what's the difference, anyhow?) that isn't instrument-specific, but machine-specific. I have vague memories of making a right-angle fence for my 6×48 belt sander. I still have the same sander, so when I rediscovered the jig---er, fixture---a few weeks ago I was glad to see it. But as soon as I turned my back, darn if it didn't go into hiding again. I have bumped around my little shop a number of times searching for it but to no avail. So, today I made a new one. I remember having to shim the old one to get it square. The new one came out dead on the money. I'll claim that forty years of experience was responsible for that, rather than blind luck. Old-farts in the game are entitled to that. Belt sanders vary enough in design that I won't bother listing any dimensions. I have included enough photos to suggest the jist of it. Anyway, you'll probably want the fence to be longer, or taller, or shaped like an animal for all I know. I sat it on a thin spacer to clear the belt, and it remained there nicely while I put on the clamps. Use the smallest clamps that will work in order not to bump them against the underside edge of the belt. Good luck. ◆ All photos by John Calkin.
Posted on July 8, 2022May 14, 2025 by Dale Phillips Meet the Merchant: Jay Hostetler Meet the Merchant: Jay Hostetler by Jay Hargreaves Originally published in American Lutherie #91, 2007 Founded in 1968 by C.E. “Kix” Stewart and Bill MacDonald, Stewart-MacDonald started off selling banjo parts and being innovative. Almost forty years later, Stew-Mac is are still being innovative, and still selling banjo parts. But now they also offer hundreds of tools, parts, and materials for all kinds of luthiers. Jay, where were you raised? On a farm outside Athens, Ohio. I spent a lot of time in the woods. My dad’s a wood sculptor, and taught at Ohio University, a small college in Athens. So I grew up around artists and wood and nature. It’s a nice setting. In high school, about 1973, I started working in a furniture place. I enjoyed that, and I started making furniture. After high school I was going to go to the School for American Craftsmen in Rochester, New York. But they had a waiting list, and while I was waiting I started working at StewMac doing woodworking. At that time, all we did was banjos, mainly banjo kits. That was about 1977, so they were still riding the banjo wave of Deliverance. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on July 8, 2022May 12, 2025 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: Guy Rabut Meet the Maker: Guy Rabut by Tim Olsen Originally published in American Lutherie #32, 1992 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Three, 2004 On a recent trip to New York, I had the good fortune to visit Guy Rabut in his uptown Manhattan apartment above a small grocery store. We sat in his tiny shop, which was piled high with cardboard boxes in anticipation of Guy’s imminent move into a freshly renovated space in Carnegie Hall. He made the move in October, and now shares this classy address with two violin dealers, Charles Rudig and Fred Oster, and Michael Yeats, a bow maker. Artifacts of wide-ranging artistic sensitivities surrounded us, including Northwest coastal Indian carvings which Guy made during a summer seminar with renowned artist Bill Reed; his intriguing logo in which the proper curves of a violin appear in a cubist jumble; a glass case holding a few of his beautiful finished fiddles; and a pine mock-up of a banjo he plans to build someday. Guy Rabut is one of the Guild’s most faithful members. The May ’74 issue of the GAL Newsletter listed him as a new member, and he hasn’t missed a day since. He is also a member of the American Federation of Violin and Bow Makers. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on July 8, 2022May 20, 2025 by Dale Phillips Our Great Spherical Friend, Part One Our Great Spherical Friend, Part One by Frederick C. Lyman, Jr. Originally published in American Lutherie #6, 1986 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume One, 2000 See also, Our Great Spherical Friend, Part Two by Frederick C. Lyman, Jr. Our Great Spherical Friend, Part Three by Frederick C. Lyman, Jr. Improving the Plywood Bass by Frederick C. Lyman, Jr. We are referring to the cloud of gases, still largely beneficent, that surrounds our planet. This immense mass must be immensely and massively frustrated. Because, while it constantly tries to find a state of peaceful repose and equilibrium, it is just as constantly subjected to agitation by forces large and small. The earth whirls beneath it, the sun warms it on one side at a time, various objects in space tug at it, and innumerable minor annoyances are inflicted upon it by the residents of Earth. By far the worst of the minor offenders are the members of the human race, who should really be more grateful to their spherical friend. Instead, they have craftily discerned that the atmosphere that surrounds them is indeed indefatigable in its effort to reach an equilibrous state. With fiendish zeal they have invented devices for the sole purpose of agitating their friend. Some of these torture implements are known as “musical instruments” and are accorded a special reverence by those who create and use them (some of whom, however perversely, even banding together in special societies to promote these activities). Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on July 8, 2022May 20, 2025 by Dale Phillips Our Great Spherical Friend, Part Two Our Great Spherical Friend, Part Two by Frederick C. Lyman, Jr. Originally published in American Lutherie #7, 1986 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume One, 2000 See also, Our Great Spherical Friend, Part One by Frederick C. Lyman, Jr. Our Great Spherical Friend, Part Three by Frederick C. Lyman, Jr. Improving the Plywood Bass by Frederick C. Lyman, Jr. Our intent, in the design of a musical instrument, should be to keep in mind this theoretical correspondence between the atmosphere and the instrument, and to realize it in as much detail as possible. The objective is the possibility of the highest degree of control of the final tone production, with a minimum amount of effort and anguish by the performer. Music differs from other atmospheric sounds. The tones are related to emotions and are arranged in such a way as to project a panoply of emotional changes and thereby tell a story or take the listener on a sort of emotional trip. The success of a musical instrument lies in the extent to which it can be made to facilitate this kind of expression. However, the instrument is first and foremost a physical device, and its expressive properties are supported by its acoustical properties, which are in turn supported by its structural properties. Because the instrument is in a state of tension, it must have a certain structural strength, adequate to give it a basis of firm tonality. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
