Official Luthiers Forum!

Good thinking! There is a huge divide between being able to make guitars ---- and ---- making guitars with the goal of a living wage.

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

It would be helpful to know exactly what your goal is - is lutherie to be a hobby, a vocation, your only source of income. Do you want to make one instrument for yourself or many for others. It would be helpful to know what your time line is - do you want to be a "luthier" after three months, six months, two years, ten? And seriously, how much money and time are you willing to invest in tools and a shop, training, making mistakes, frustration.

If you MADE a nut (instead of just buying a premade one) then you already have a small start - you will have done some careful measurement and layout, crafted it to fit the slot in the neck, cut the proper sized slots for the strings, adjusted the depth of the slots for optimum playability, polished it to look nice. Ideally you adjusted the other parts of the action for playability too. I have probably 2 or 300 dollars of special tools that I use for nut making - they were expensive when I bought them ten years ago but I use them almost every day.

"it re-sparked an interest in it that I have had for about the last 25 years or so. It started when I first started playing guitar at 16"

"It would be helpful to know what your time line is - do you want to be a "luthier" after three months, six months, two years, ten? "

From one of your early posts I'm assuming you are about 40+ years old (about the age of someone retiring from the military). Freeman's query is a valid one - how soon do you want to be making a living from building and repairing instruments? Not to be pessimistic but after 40 years of building, and a couple of hundred instruments of various kinds I still consider myself an amateur luthier. I could hang out a shingle tomorrow and starve the next day!

How old are you? Do you plan to, or have, children?
I bet most would agree this is a huge dividing line. Living out of the back of your truck, eating beans and rice, learning and following good beginner job opportunities, can be romantic and fun. Pulling your kids out of a school they like, or explaining you can't afford the soccer warm-ups the rest of their team mates have, not so much. Are you Married? Is she/He on board with the plan? These are the questions that may impact your happiness the most.

It's not THAT bad! Lol. Yes, it is an expensive hobby. But let's assume it takes you a year to build one. Not unusual. Let's say you invest $1500 in the project. Not that far off the mark. Then it's just $120 or or so a month. A couple of golf games. A moderate cigarette habit. It can be done. Of course, if u go nuts and build and equip a shop, u might want to add a bedroom to it.