Official Luthiers Forum!

Hellow and thank you to all for their amazing past posts. I have been reading them for a couple of weeks. There is so much there, better than any book. I have been making jigs in my free time for the last couple weeks. I have been a woodworker for many years so I have most of the necessary tools. I build mostly cabinets, built ins, stairwells, wine cellars, trim on higher end homes. This will be my first attempt and building a guitar so I won't be much help to the group in that regard. I was a photographer for 7 or 8 years so I might be of some help with photographing your work. I liked photography but hated having to hustle work all the time.

I want to give a shout out to Greg Nelson for steering me to this group. I ran into him at a garage sale he was having. He even sent me home with some tone wood!!!.

My question is. Has anyone ever made a poorman's thickness sander from a belt sander. I was thinking of making some sort of jig to hold my beefy Makita belt sander a fixed and adjustable distance above the work. My sander came from a flooring company and I have to think it will take as much material off as fast as any drum sander, has decent dust control as well.

Some of my pictures are still hanging out on the web, http.www.michaelfsmith.net

_________________
http://goatrockukulele.com

Welcome to the forum Michael!

I am not so sure about your belt sander idea, but many people have built homemade thickness sanders relatively cheap. Hopefully someone who has will chime in.

Good luck with your building.

Ed

Hello and welcome Michael.
You might try looking at a tool called the Lutheriers Friend for an idea. I don't have one, but it basically turns a spindle sander into a thickness sander. I would think a similar kind of thing could be done with a belt sander.

_________________
Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Hi Michael and welcome,

I would worry about a thickness sander from a belt sander because so much of the abrasive would be in contact with the wood being thicknessed. I have used a home made drum sander and it was worrysome safety wise. It wanted to throw the piece being shaped and it was hard to control. If you could overcome this safety issue obviously a belt sander would do a fast job of thinning your parts.

http://plansnow.com/dn3078.html

This is an idea someone else posted on this forum before. It is a drum sander.

_________________
http://www.booneguitars.com
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Stephen-Boone-guitar-builder/488208541257210

I forgot to mention the Safety-planer. It is pretty inexpensive and works well to rough size your stock. You can finish up with a hand plane and scraper and/or sand paper. You would have to do this step in any case.

_________________
http://www.booneguitars.com
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Stephen-Boone-guitar-builder/488208541257210

Stephens suggestion of a safety planer is excellent BTW.

_________________
Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

I third that motion!

Michael-
Welcome!
About using your belt sander as a thickness sander- I agree with Stephen on the 'fling the workpiece' problem. (I use a homebuilt, hand-feed thickness drum sander.)

What do you want to do with the thickness sander? For thicknessing binding strips and the like, a sanding drum in your drill press and a simple fence will do. (Or a scraping jig)

For sides, you can thickness with a Safe-T Planer, or do it by hand with plane and/or scraper.

For top thicknessing, a sharp plane is very satisfying, and if you start with some 'easy' wood (straight grain Indian Rosewood, or mahogany) you can thickness the back (and sides) with a plane as well.

Or trade that belt sander for a used motor and some pillow blocks and build a thickness sander!

BTW- SafeT Planer is an excellent tool for rough shaping neck/headstock to thickness as well.

Cheers
John

Welcome! This site is LOADED with great info and seriously talented folks so you have chosen wisely.


I made a thickness sander some time back and agree that they aren't too complicated to make from scratch. Make sure you make a solid enough structure so it doesn't shake itself apart. (yeah...made that mistake too). The only advantage I see to making your own, other than the joy of a project and saving some money, is that you can make it whatever width you like. I enjoy having the option to run a full sized top through a few times to clean up jointing mistakes and stuff. Getting the 'drum' perfectly round is a pain, but worth the effort.

If you can get a belt sander to work for you, great, but yeah...flying lumber sucks! Especially if it is a nearly finished top or fancy back!!!

Matthew

Michael,
Welcome, I am relatively new here myself, but we fit into the same category, I have been doing pro woodworking for some time, windows, doors, cabinets and whatever will pay the bills. Similarly, I have loads of tools that I would like to make work for lutherie, but how? I recently used my full mortise lock machine as a wagner planer, wow that was scary, but worked. I think I will by the wagner safe t planer for the next round. I have wanted to try the same with a belt sander, but even compared to a home made drum sander, with all the extra surface area that a belt creates, there will be that much more kick back. On the real wide belt sanders there is an adjustable platen that is relatively small. The adjustment is made until the work stops kicking back. IMO you will be in for a good long project to make this work, depends on how you want to spend your time. The other's recommendations sound good to me. My method of sanding has been to use the wide belt sander at a shop I used to work at, I get stuff ready and get there at the start of lunch, so the machine is free. I only need it for the wide stuff, but since it is so easy, I try and get it all done on one visit. Perhaps your cabinet experience can help you get in.

So far I have found that building a guitar, though a world of its own, is still done in a woodshop. I have found the great help on this site to support what I have learned as a woodworker more then change it. The processes and methods are similar, just guitars have much more subtlety and little forgiveness. Personally this venture into lutherie feels like a natural evolution of my time in a wood shop, like all those 1000's of bf of lumber I have milled and the gallons of glue, were practice just for this. So off to the shop, some window work to pay for new guitar building tools, and some work on guitar #1, it is so exciting to work on it.
Welcome to the world of lutherie,
Rob

_________________
http://shastaguitar.com/
http://www.kalimbakit.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/comfyfootgr ... ature=mhee
http://www.facebook.com/robert.renick.7