Posted on January 14, 2010March 7, 2024 by Dale Phillips Review: Building an Acoustic Guitar by Dan Erlewine and Todd Sams Review: Building an Acoustic Guitar by Dan Erlewine and Todd Sams Reviewed by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #84, 2005 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Building an Acoustic Guitar Dan Erlewine and Todd Sams Stewart-MacDonald, VHS, 71 minutes, 2002 www.stew-mac.com The title of this video is a bit misleading. It’s about building an acoustic guitar from a Stew-Mac kit, and if you are a first-time scratch builder with no kit experience, it will leave you in the dark in so many ways that you will be helpless. The kit comes complete with bent and contoured sides, joined plates, shaped braces, a 90% (or more) shaped neck, a slotted and radiused fingerboard, and a top routed for rosette rings. No mention is made of how to complete any of the pre-performed tasks, and that’s a lot of stuff to leave out. If they had only added the word kit to the end of the title, I wouldn’t have a complaint in the world about this video. You can’t knock people for not doing what they didn’t set out to do. The focus of this tape is on building a satisfying kit guitar with the fewest specialized tools and the least confusion. A portable drill and a laminate trimmer are just about the only power tools used. A few cam clamps and a bunch of large spool clamps are the only hand tools used that aren’t likely to be found in any home tool kit. A few shop tips are included — trade secrets, as Dan Erlewine would call them — but other than that, there is no extraneous information included. If you don’t need to know it, it isn’t there. It’s not a matter of holding back information, but a matter of preventing a clutter of information from causing confusion. I enjoy trivia, but this isn’t the place for it. 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 January 14, 2010March 7, 2024 by Dale Phillips Review: Build a Steel String Guitar with Robert O’Brien by Robert O’Brien Review: Build a Steel String Guitar with Robert O’Brien by Robert O’Brien Reviewed by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #84, 2005 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Build a Steel String Guitar with Robert O’Brien Robert O’Brien Apprentice Publishing, DVD, 2005 www.obrienguitars.com or LMI This DVD will henceforth be included with LMI steel string guitar kits. Because I have some criticisms of it, I’d like to make a couple things clear at the start. I’ve built and reviewed kits from several companies, and I believe that for the first-time builder they are the way to go. I’m especially fond of kits that include joined plates, installed rosettes, bent sides, and a slotted fretboard. A shaped neck is also OK, but an adventurous first-timer can deal with shaping a neck. My point is that no matter how accomplished an individual is as a woodworker, it can’t be accepted that lutherie is a natural next step. It’s just too different. A good kit can smooth the stormy seas that arise when one faces the creation of their first guitar. I’m a believer. I’m also a believer in video instruction. It pains me to say so, but I believe that books have had their day. Live interactive instruction is best. Video/film is next. Books are a distant third. If you suspect that a terminal failure of the power grid will resurrect the importance of books, I surrender to your paranoia (you are obviously a fan of Lucifer’s Hammer by Niven and Pournelle). Barring a natural catastrophe of global scale, electronic instruction is here to stay and I salute it. 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 January 13, 2010March 7, 2024 by Dale Phillips Review: Violin Making — Live! Watch Me Make a Cello, Step-by-Step by Henry Strobel Review: Violin Making — Live! Watch Me Make a Cello, Step-by-Step by Henry Strobel Reviewed by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #58, 1999 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Five, 2008 Video: Violin Making — Live! Video: Watch Me Make a Cello, Step-by-Step Henry Strobel, 1997 ISBN 0962067385 Henry Strobel has written a fleet of books about making violins, violas, and cellos, all of which build one upon the other. To use the cello book you should have first read the violin book, and so on. This video set uses the same idea, i.e., to use it to best advantage you must have the cello book, which needs the violin book for complete understanding, and so on, all in the house that Jack built. But if you buy the video set, Strobel will sell you the cello book for $10 instead of $30, which might remove some of the sting. And if you haven’t got a cello guru to run to as you tear into your first instrument, Strobel on tape may be the next best thing. The videos are not intensely detailed or perfectly complete. Almost no operation is carried through to completion on tape. But Strobel has the capacity to make cello creation seem wonderfully doable. The first three hours of tape whiz by with so little effort that even a casual viewer might decide to buy a whacking big gouge and a fistful of teeny planes. Carving the plates often seems like the scariest part of cello making, but Strobel makes it look like fun. 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 January 12, 2010March 7, 2024 by Dale Phillips Review: Guitar Finishing Step-by-Step by Dan Erlewine and Don MacRostie Review: Guitar Finishing Step-by-Step by Dan Erlewine and Don MacRostie Reviewed by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #61, 2000 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Six, 2013 Guitar Finishing Step-by-Step Dan Erlewine and Don MacRostie Stewart-MacDonald, 1998 ISBN 978-0964475236 The death of lacquer as an available finish was pronounced at least ten years ago. Because lacquer was so environmentally hazardous, the various levels of government were supposed to restrict its use to the point that manufacturers would find no profit in producing the stuff. Well, folks, it hasn’t happened, and lacquer remains the premier finish for most string instruments. If you’ve yet to have your first heady whiff of lacquer fumes, you should study Guitar Finishing Step-By-Step before you dive in. If your plans include the re-creation of the many factory guitar finishes, you should have this book regardless of your experience level. The book has a strange flow to it, though. There are only three stages of finish work — wood prep, finish application, and rubout. However, the plethora of tools and materials available today leave too naïve an approach open to confusion and failure. To avoid this, Erlewine and MacRostie rely on detailed description, technical information, and a degree of repetition to cover all the bases thoroughly. For instance, a description of power sanders is followed twenty pages later by a description of power sanding. Both sections include important and overlapping information. Readers who skip about in order to get on with their finish work will find themselves handicapped. 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 January 12, 2010March 7, 2024 by Dale Phillips Review: Sunburst Finishing by Dan Erlewine and Don MacRostie Review: Sunburst Finishing by Dan Erlewine and Don MacRostie Reviewed by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #63, 2000 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Six, 2013 Video: Sunburst Finishing Dan Erlewine and Don MacRostie Stewart-MacDonald, 1999 Sunburst Finishing is sort of a strange video in that it’s intended to replace Stew-Mac’s out-of-date Color Finishing, yet it doesn’t cover nearly as much territory as the older film. So be it. It only costs half as much as the old tape, and the information included may be as much as you need. The only guitar involved is an archtop Guild with a maple face. Some repair work has been done to the top before the tape begins, and the finish has also been removed. The job at hand is to match the sunburst on the top to that of the rest of the guitar. A yellow toner has to be mixed for the maple, then a brown candy is blended to match the color of the burst. The techniques of precision blending are the heart of the video, an operation at which MacRostie is a master. Chip sheets and blending boards are made which can be stashed away for future reference. The work is also referenced to the recipes in MacRostie and Erlewine’s new book, Guitar Finishing Step-By-Step (p. 530), which is a useful touch. There is no wood prep involved in the job (as far as the camera is concerned), as this video is intended to work in concert with Spray Finishing Basics, another video by the same dynamic duo. Touchups are necessary when the binding is scraped after the color coats, and the airbrush work is caught on tape. A close look at MacRostie’s scraping tools is a helpful segment. 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.
