Hi Dana and All, With all respect for Dana's woodworking skills, which must be vast to build pipe organs, I must disagree on the tools necessary to build lutes, even in some quantity. My shop is currently a corner of our basement and measures 10'x8'. The only power tools I use are, a Delta 14" band saw (for general sawing and re-sawing with a 1/2" wide blade), a table top drill press, a corded and cordless drill, a disk sander and a dremmel tool. The one other big power item is a Jet mini wood lathe for pegs. Everything else is done with hand tools. I prefer to get my chisels from eBay since I can find vintage socket chisels which make it easy to replace the handles. I sharpen with Japanese water stones. I have a collection of small planes, several of which I made for a specific task such as cutting the shelf for a binding on a lute top. My most expensive hand tools are a couple from Lie Nielsen, a small scraper plane and a low angle smoothing plane. Otherwise it's Stanley all the way.
I built me first lute on a drafting table in my apartment in Portland. While I did some of the work at Bob Lundeberg's shop I did most of it at home, even carving the mould, making huge mess. It's not so much the amount of equipment you can gather that makes the lute. It's having the fire in your belly to do it and the guts to get about it. Best, Rob Dorsey http://RobDorsey.com -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, December 08, 2007 1:57 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [LUTE-BUILDER] Re: Lute construction Sorry all, I should have waited to reply, my previous posting was incomplete because of time constraints. To build from plans and use wood bought from commercial sources (rather than as a kit) you will want access to a general woodworking shop - resawing bandsaw, ordinary bandsaw, table saw, jointer, planer. Many large cities have woodworking clubs. I build pipe organs for a living, and have permission to use the shops tools for small home projects (I pay rent when doing work for sale). Sometimes you can find a medium or small size cabinet/millwork shop that resells excess wood and does small-scale millwork for a reasonable fee, or one that allows employees to earn tips for small amounts of ad-hoc millwork on provided wood. Do you and the shop the favor of providing a sketch showing precisely what you want done; also, be careful not to impose, friday at closing is not the best time, tho a half hour earlier may have been ideal. For soundboard tuning you want cabinet scrapers and small planes, spokeshaves, and gouges, look to the ample violin making literature for details on use. Sharpening equipment for all your tools, and a reference book for sharpening angles (in metals) which you will augment for the woods you use. A plate of glass plus wet/dry paper (scary-sharp system), traditional european oil stones, traditional japanese water stones, each of these systems has some advantage, and there are machines one can invest in to help with precision and speed. Dont assume any tool fresh from the store is ready for use, plane soles are ground flat, but may have sprung, and usually are only sorta flat; frogs need adjustment if not reshaping; irons and cap irons need resharpening and honeing, then bedding. The proper cutting angle for a chisel/gouge varys according to the nature of the wood to be worked. Woods with diffuse small pores can tolerate a stronger angled edge which will last longer (Maple, Apple..) Softer woods with larger pores (diffuse or not) will be more air than cellulose and need a more acute cutting angle which is more fragile (pine, spruce..). Woods which are hard in places but also have rings of large pores (Jatoba, Oak, Ash) are a compromise, some cuts will need one tool, others a different one. Ideally you should have double sets of tools, but that is costly. Sometimes you must work with a tool not ideal but which will do the job with care. Manufacturors will give you a compromise angle which may not suit the work you intend. Minimal kit is a concept that is difficult to establish, so much depends on personal preference. Plan to spend time at yard and estate sales, tools are not always present, but when they are its often a good buy if only for the steel. Careful with complex pieces like a plain, often the sole will be worn out or split (wooden body), perhaps the iron is not original and wrong, perhaps a steeltipped iron has been oversharpened, perhaps a steel-bodied plane is warped, dented, or badly rusted beyond redemption. Still, old Stanleys, Records, and Baileys are worth $15-20 for you to experiment on tuning the plane up. Wooden bodied planes are easy to fabricate, if you have a usable iron, so even if the iron was wrong for the plane you have, you can make something to use that iron. A forge with anvils hammers and tongs is the ultimate tool, assuming you have a country place, tolerant neighbors and firecode. Most carvers with serious collections of tools at least make the handles, if not the blades. Used to be a store on 18th st in NYC that sold unhandled swiss tools (a Sculpting school was nearby), I hope someone still does that retail, hopefully online. Oh, some of the items used by jewlers are useful - gravers, jewlers saw blades, reamers, needle files (in grades, #2 has alternatives, #0, #4 for example). A lifetime of various hobbies has built my tool collection, last time I moved it filled my car, leaving just a small amount of room for the driver (no lunch, no room to consult a map, luckily the car was towed behind a full rented truck). Dont know how I will move next time, I have of course added to the collection, including a south bend lathe. Oh, Yes, you need some way to make pegs. You dont need a lathe for that, you can carve the heads and shave the tapered shanks, but, lathe-turned heads are prefereable. Dont worry about the size of your tool chest, plan on having several of them. -- Dana Emery To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
