Kitting out "Noel's Luthiery Workshop at the Bottom of the Garden"

I have been outrageously slack in keeping this blog up to date. I started a page on Facebook as it was easier to post quick updates of what I was doing, but I really prefer the way this blog captures the full story, so I'm moving back here.

The gouzoui project has been finished for some time, and I'll bring things up to date on the next posts. But, firstly, I realised that I was going to need to invest in a few tools before moving into building rather than repairing, so over the space of a few months I kitted myself out.

I considered these to be the "essentials":

Bandsaw - I picked up a second hand Clarke from EBay. It's OK and much better since I put a decent blade on it (Tuffsaws: https://www.tuffsaws.co.uk/) but I think in time I'll probably replace it with a better quality one.

Belt sander - this has probably had the most use and definitely falls into the category of "how did I ever manage without one"! It also has a disc sander, which is really handy too.

Planer/Thicknesser - expensive, but really worthwhile. I've found that I can reliably plane to within about .5mm thickness. I can recommend this Triton one as a good "hobby" piece of kit.

And the last big piece of kit was a table saw. It's very noisy and I don't like using it really! But it just saves so much work for certain tasks!

All this stuff generates lots of nasty dust. I tried to get by with an old vacuum cleaner as an extractor but it just wasn't up to it, so I opted for a proper one with a 4" extractor hose.

Frustratingly, all of these machines have different sized extract outlets. I am gradually making a set of adaptors so that I can just plug the hose onto each one as I need it. (My workshop is way too small to have a sophisticated ducting system taking up space.) These are the ones for the thicknesser and the sander. I made them using some PVC rainwater pipe, which can be heated and moulded using a hot air gun. Conversely, the diameter can be stepped down by gluing bands within it.

As the workshop is so small (about 12' x 8'), I've made a set of rolling units on locking castors that I can move around as I need them. That arrangement works really well.

And I've also bought / adapted various small hand tools, that you'll see along the way. The first one though was a set of flush nippers / fret cutters, that I made by grinding down a standard set of pincers. The key to this was to do the grinding in small bursts so that the cutting edges didn't overheat and lose their hardening.