The Jig is Up - Luthier Tool Makes the High-tech Tools that Make Instruments

Jigs have been around as long as guitars, long before the industrial age. A jig is a tool that clamps and positions materials for easier woodworking - essentially a simple machine designed and built for the purpose of making something else. For the complex craft of guitar building, Seattle-area Luthier Tool Company has found many contemporary ways to engineer the instruments that make instruments.

The company, run by owner Chris Klumper, started when his desire to build his own guitar ran into his engineering curiosity. “I’d get to a stage where I needed a new tool, I’d go buy one. Sometimes I’d get to a difficult stage in building, and I thought, there should be something for this. There has to be an easier way.”

When a tool to solve a problem could not be found, a fellow hobbyist suggested he built one himself. “The first invention was the binder cutter. I showed it to my friend, who used it and said, ‘this is great.’ The next thought was: if it worked well for him, maybe other people would like it. And eventually we began adding more tools to the line.”

Years later, Klumper’s mechanical tinkering is now a fulltime occupation. Luthier Tool products, which now range from simple jigs, vises, and fixtures to actual motorized machine tools - like a handheld binding cutter that routes out wood rabbets - have gained a passionate following in the small contingent of people who build guitars from scratch.

“For me, the neck angle jig is a god-send,” says guitarmaker James Curtis, who purchased one of Luthier’s more popular offerings. “It essentially transforms the most frustrating and less pleasant procedure of lutherie into a simple step of great ease and high accuracy. I actually enjoy everything about making the neck angle now, which is a first.”

Pain in the Neck

Building your own musical instrument is a long process of many stages. Some steps bring out the artisan in the builder: the creative decisions, aesthetic details, and careful fine tuning. But along the way, there are many more stages which are the same from guitar to guitar: basic construction actions that are time-consuming and tedious – and as Curtis implies – simply a pain in the neck.

“Putting a little automation into the art of guitarmaking isn’t taking the craftsmanship out of it,” says Klumper, who says automated tools for the luthier should not be confused with assembly-line production. His customers are still customizers - from hobbyists beginning their first attempt to professional luthiers creating $30,000 guitars.

When so much time and material expense goes into a single project, it is also important to perform even the most mundane task cleanly and with great accuracy. One small error in woodworking might require the luthier to start all over. Automating some of the basic cuts, alignments, and measurements ensures a consistency that even experts would find difficult to achieve by hand.

“In violin-making, there are some staunch traditionalists,” says Klumper. “They will say if you make a violin, you want to do everything by hand.” If the customer demand for Luthier Tool products is any indicator, then guitar builders seem to be more modern in their sensibilities and more amenable to letting technology lend a helping hand.

“We make the tools to help you get to the point where you really want to be in the first place,” explains Klumper. “Take out the mundane stuff that doesn’t require craftsmanship and let a machine do it - that is what people are slowly realizing.”

Letting a Machine Do It

Making a strong argument for machine automation in craftsmanship, Klumper recently had to apply the same rule to his own business. For years, Klumper cut all the metal parts for his products using a manual milling machine and a lathe. In the last two years, heavy demand for an expanding line of products began to overwhelm his schedule.

“You get to a point where you are working twelve-hour days,” says Klumper. He contemplated hiring a trained machinist as an assistant, but was dissuaded by the complications that come with adding new staff. “The problem with adding an employee is there so many additional costs to set that up, insurance costs, taxes, and so forth, in addition to a regular wage.” To cut out the time it takes to do the mundane production tasks, Klumper elected to go another route. He let a machine do it.

In lieu of hiring an employee, Klumper purchased an automated machine tool. He took advantage of an industrial technology that is just now becoming accessible to the individual. Computer Numeric Controlled (CNC) machines cut parts automatically based on the input of CAD design files or 3D models.

In the last ten years, design software as well as the programs that run automated mills, called CAM, have come down dramatically in price. The user affability of CAD and CAM applications have also evolved to the point that even novices can learn how to make sophisticated mechanics without a great deal of training.

The hardware, however, has long been the biggest hurtle in getting automated production into the hands of small businesses. After careful research, Klumper invested in one of the first PCNC 1100 mills from Tormach. The Tormach CNC mill is revolutionary in the sense that its size, cost, and needs for programming and machining expertise are small, but the machine’s rigidity, power, and versatility are ample enough to cut real parts out of virtually any material.

Middle CNC

CNC machines, says Klumper, historically came in two sizes, large and small. Small machines were generally makeshift CNC conversions of manual desktop mills, used by hobbyists to cut wood and light metals, but not practical to build the substantial metal parts of Luthier Tool Company.

Large models were intended for factory production. They weighed several tons, and demanded at very least a $30,000 investment. Klumper looked into mills from popular brands such as Haas and Grizzly before his shop upgrade. “You have to think long and hard before you give over that much cash,” he says. “After pricing all the larger machines, I found Tormach. It was really in the price range I was looking for.” The midsize Tormach PCNC 1100 starts at only $6800.

Klumper remained cautious. “When you look at something on the Internet, it doesn’t really do it justice. It’s like buying a house from just somebody raving about it, and not actually going there,” he says. “But Tormach seemed to have designed a machine especially geared to someone in my position, and had a lot of current users I could talk to.”

The Tormach website outlines the company’s design philosophy and its three-year quest to develop a simple, adaptable tooling platform that optimized cutting accuracy and power for prototyping and small runs of production. The site also featured a forum of other mill users who trade tips and advice online. The positive feedback from users convinced Klumper to make the purchase.

With the addition of the automated mill, Klumper could not only cut parts in less time, the time Klumper had to stand in front of the workstation decreased dramatically. He could run the programming for a batch of parts, hit the start button, and walk away to attend to other parts of the business.

“I was under pressure, since I wasn’t going to be able to put an order through without a boost in production. As it turned out in the end, I’m very happy with it. I bought it just in time for a trade show in Washington,” Klumper recalls. “The Tormach mill really saved my bacon.”

Automation for Six-strings

Just as automated tools give a luthier more time to spend on creativity, the new automated tool system has given Klumper the extra time to pursue innovation. Luthier Tool’s CNC machine is now building a CNC machine itself.

Klumper’s newest creation, the Neck CNC Machine, employs CNC technology to route guitar necks and cut fret slots up and down the finger board. Guitar builders can layout custom necks in a simple CAD program on a PC, and let the machine do the difficult work of carving. The result is a neck with flawless shape in a matter of minutes.

“The new machine is basically a full 3-axis CNC machine that is designed for carving necks, bridges and other complex shapes. With a saw attachment, it will cut fret slots for the length of the neck, at any scale, from mandolins to bass guitars,” explains Klumper. “Many expensive guitars also have intricate inlay work on the fingerboard, which you can program the Neck CNC to cut. So there’s a lot of versatility and a lot of potential in this machine.”

With recent software and engineering innovations, CNC machining is finally coming out of the factories and into the home workshops. The technology has now reached a level of practicality, simplicity, and cost to become an economically viable for the individual craftsperson. Personal CNC may be the most influential development this decade for small-run and custom producers. In the past, craftspeople had to be traditionalists. Now they have a choice.

About Luthier Tool Company

Founded by Chris Klumper, engineer, inventor, and principal designer, Luthier Tool Company develops precision tools that enable custom and production guitar builders to focus on what is most important: the joy of building stringed instruments and the artistry of their craft. Luthier Tool offers a set of amazing hand-finished tools that transform the way luthiers perform custom work, producing quality results with greater control, accuracy and speed. To view the full catalog of tools, please visit: www.luthiertool.com.