HI, I'm Frank Pope of FBI Guitars and I'm here on the behalf of Expert Village to talk to you guys about how to build your own guitar.
Required Tools: Part 2
This is the drill that I use in building a lot of guitars. This servers double duty, it can be used as an actual drill with drill bits to drill holes into the guitar. But it serves a very essential purpose when you get down to the finishing. If you'll notice, this is not a rechargeable drill. I own several rechargeable drills and for drilling holes in wood they're fine. This is a buffing pad that you're going to use in the end. And the process I use, uses three buffing pads of slightly more smooth surface as you progress and they use the same buffing compound from beginning to end. In order to have sufficient torque and speed to make the grinding compound burn the finish, you must have a drill that's either over 20 volts, rechargeable in those are just highly expensive, or a simple, this is like a $9-$10 drill, and it will work fine for buffing even the hardest finishes out to a glass shine.
This is a jointer, it serves two purposes in the building of guitars. Mostly in the higher end guitars. You can get away with, if your neck blank that you start cutting, if you take it to someone and have them square it up on all four sides, take it to someone who has a jointer. That's the only time you'll need the jointer in the production of that particular guitar. If you're going to make an accoustic guitar or if you're going to make a fancy carved top guitar, they you are going to need to have a jointer. What it will do is not only let you make the neck blank square all around before you start, but you'll be able to run the two separate sides of the flame or curly maple down this so that they'll fit together perfectly when you joint them. Also with the top of an accoustic guitar, you'll be able to do the same thing, it'll fit with no space in between.
This is what's referred to as a belt sander. It' also has a station on the side, which is a spinning disc. You probably should not remove the guard from your sander. I've done it because there are certain things I couldn't do with the guard on, I put it back on, but I left it off for demonstration purposes so you can see it. What's important about this particular sander is it is variable speed. At certain speeds, the plastic, the bindings or other parts of a guitar that you may want to make flat may actually catch on fire in your hand, so you need to go at a slower speed. If you're wondering, how will I know which ones will catch on fire? They'll let you know when the flame appears and you'll know you need to slow down the next time you put that kind on there. For the side thing, you can use it to shape your nuts, the saddles, anything made out of bone. You can also shape metal parts with it. The important thing about this is that it lets you flatten the fingerboard after you put the inlays on. For that you really can't do it any other way accept by hand which is just as good but takes much longer.
This is the drill press and it will enable you to do certain things building your guitar, that while you can probably do them by hand, you can be certain that they are absolutely in line and perpendicular to the top if you do it with a drill press. One of the best parts about this particular tool is, you can premark where you're hole is going to go, in other words if you have this very fine tip, you know where that pencil mark is going to need to go. You can actually make sure it's going to hit exactly there. Clamp the wood down and then when you turn it on and go back down you'll be able to know that it's exaclty where it needs to be as far as the measurements.
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