There's a certain idea about how to deal with a luthier's business. First, you need knowledge about the crafts. That means hours of reading and if you have the chance, going to an actual shop and learn from someone else. Nowadays, there are excellent online resources for this. I can name the courses of Carlos Juan Busquiel and Pablo Requena. These Spanish guitarmakers are on my top tier list in regards of didactics and content. They post regularly on YouTube and you might be thinking that it only applies to guitars. However, knowledge about how to make an instrument of a family is transferable to any other similar instruments. If it has strings, a pear-like shape or looks similar to a guitar, then this is made in a similar way.
Second, you need of course tools for the job. I wish we could get a lot done with bare hands, but ours are not made for this kind of woodworking. You still need them to be precise. Making an instrument requires the finesse of a woodcarver and a surgeon combined. Good ears are also in this category. A good eye for wood and touch for grains. It's all a thing on sense working together to achieve a goal. Tools come as the extension needed to make all this happen. Some luthiers around here can make everything with just a knife. That's crazy in a lot of ways! Nonetheless, it is achievable. Having more tools might be a luxury, but it also improves the quality of your work and shortens the time spent in each piece. Thus, instruments are made faster and their quality is improved greatly.
Third, it comes as a no brainer, you need materials. And I'm not talking only about wood. If chordophones (instruments with strings) were made with joints, well it would be cheaper to make them. But you need glue to bind the pieces together, Then, you need stuff to seal the grain of the wood and something to make a finishing coat. To this you need to add strings, tuning pegs, fret wire, and any other things that goes in your crafts. Maybe you do inlays with other materials. Microphones, if you're making electro-acoustic instruments or electric ones. The list goes on.
So how does one start investing in this? It's not an easy answer, but you could set goals. For example, you need to stablish the bare minimum of tools, materials and knowledge to start working. But after you start selling the instruments, how to keep this machine going? Well, you need to invest the money to grow your shops. This means buying the tools you're missing, more materials and not forgetting to put some of it in knowledge.
As you might know, I received a generous donation and have started to invest this money in the best way I can. Some tools are coming this way from USA. And of course I'm getting some local things. Hopefully, I'll have something flat to sharpen tools in the nearby future plus some some wood to make more jigs. When I have all of this, I'll let you have a peak at it.
Last week, I started to address my issue with clamps. There's a saying that goes there's never enough clamps. I consider this to be true. Maybe other kinds of woodworking can use less clamps, but here we need to glue a lot of things or hold them to carve or sand. So a lot of clamps can make the work easier. These were a one time deal or a local page. I took the chances and got the last too. The price was too good to be true. However, these tools though cheap are study and perform its job quite well. Besides they are longer than my previous clamps, this is a bonus. Hopefully, more of them will come around. However, I don't think there'll ever be another sale like this one!
Going on with other issues, I had no tuning pegs nor strings for future instruments. An instrument without them can't do its job. So, it was time to invest. Part of the donation money went on some strings and tuning pegs. 18$ to be precise. I think this shop has the best deals in these around here. The best is that I don't have wait a lot for shipping to get these, so if I ever need them in a pinch, I won't have to worry.
