Ten shop tips
for smarter
building.

The short version

Fourteen things that come up constantly in a working shop, repairs, substitutions and habits. None of them is complicated. Several of them save real money, and a few solve problems people assume are unfixable.

Stop paying luthier prices for hardware store items

What you need	Music shop price	Buy this instead	Price
Microfiber cloths	A few dollars each	Hardware store multipack	A fraction of that per cloth, for 24
Pickup mounting foam	Sold by the piece	Door and window weatherstrip foam	Cheap, a whole roll
Nut files	A full set is expensive	Your own old wound strings	Free
Fret puller	Purpose made tool	Cheap horizontal cutters, ground flat	Barely anything
Fretboard oil	Branded "guitar" oil	Howard's Feed-N-Wax	Hardware store
Razor blades		Box of 100	Cheap

The pattern is worth noticing: most of these are ordinary products with a music shop label on them. Once you know what a thing actually is, you can usually buy it somewhere cheaper.

1. Steaming a dent out of wood

1. Wet an old rag with water and lay it over the dent
2. Press a hot iron onto the rag
3. The steam drives into the fibers and lifts them

Expect to repeat it. Sometimes once does it; a deep dent may need four or five goes, and even then you may only get most of it.

The surrounding grain will raise slightly too. Let everything dry, then sand lightly and the whole area disappears.

On a finished guitar this is much harder. Nitrocellulose or urethane will block the steam, so you generally have to sand down to bare wood first.

For a very small dent there's an alternative: a drop of rubbing alcohol in the dent, lit and allowed to burn off, which can raise it without soaking the wood. Obvious care required: small quantity, nothing else flammable nearby.

2. Veneering without a vacuum press

A press is the standard tool and it's not the only way. This method uses ordinary wood glue and a household iron.

1. Thin the glue slightly with water and stir it thoroughly
2. Brush a thin coat onto both surfaces, the veneer and the body
3. Let it dry. A hair dryer speeds this considerably
4. Two or three coats each side, drying between
5. When the last coat is dry, or very nearly, position the veneer
6. Iron it down. The heat melts both films and they bind

About fifteen minutes later it's on there solidly. As well attached as it would be from a press.

• It must go onto bare wood. Veneering over a clear coat won't work with this method. Sand back, or use contact cement instead
• For curved surfaces, mist the back of the veneer with a little water to make it more pliable
• Bubbles that appear later: hit them with the iron again. The glue remelts and pulls the veneer back down

Particularly useful on hollow bodies and other shapes a press struggles with. And when you simply need one thing veneered without setting the press up.

3. Nut files from old strings

When you change strings, keep the offcuts from the wound E, A and D. Superglue a length onto a popsicle stick or a chopstick and you've a nut slot file at the exact gauge of the string that'll sit in it.

It will not work for a plain G, only for wound strings. But it covers the three slots that most often need opening up, and it costs nothing.

Worth saving those offcuts anyway, the sharp end is useful for clearing airbrush nozzles and similar fine cleaning jobs.

4. Pickup mounting foam

Guitars with pickups mounted directly into the body. No pickguard, use a block of foam underneath instead of springs. Sold as a luthier part, it is priced accordingly.

It is door and window weatherstrip insulation foam. Adhesive on one side, foam on the other, sold in rolls at any hardware store for a few dollars. Cut a piece, stick it in the cavity, and stack two layers if you need more lift.

5. Tape: the difference that matters

Frog Tape has almost no texture. Press it down and paint stops dead at the edge, giving a straight line.

So use both, for different jobs:

• Painter's tape for blanket masking, covering large areas where the edge doesn't show
• Frog Tape for every line that'll be visible. Stripes, fretboard edges, any graphic work

It comes in several widths. For paint jobs, this is the one.

6. Micro splinters

Most splinters come out with tweezers. The ones that don't are the tiny, near invisible ones, and they hurt disproportionately. Fine magnet wire from pickup winding is a particularly nasty offender.

Two methods, both of which work when tweezers can't:

• Wood glue. Put a blob over the spot, dry it with a hair dryer, then peel the film off. The splinter usually comes with it
• Duct tape. Press it on and pull, and this is the part that matters, in the opposite direction to the way the splinter went in. Rolling the tape over the area also works

The same duct tape trick works for fiberglass insulation splinters.

7. The razor blade

A box of a hundred is cheap, and it's arguably the most useful thing in the shop. Uses that come up daily:

• Scraping
• Taking drips out of a clear coat
• Levelling and flattening
• Binding work
• Cutting veneer
• Cleaning out fret slots
• Cleaning up excess superglue

Nobody talks about razor blades and everybody uses one several times a day. Buy a box.

8. Modify cheap tools

A set of horizontal cutters costing about a dollar makes an excellent fret puller, after one modification.

Out of the packet the jaw face is slightly curved, so it cannot get underneath a fret. Run the end across a belt sander until it is flat and it'll slide straight under.

You are only pulling frets. There is no reason to spend more.

Heat reduces chip out when pulling. A soldering iron run along the fret warms it and softens whatever is holding it, particularly worth doing on older necks where someone has used superglue in the slots.

9. Superglue for a fret that'll not seat

A fret that rocks or lifts when you press it can usually be fixed in place instead of replaced.

1. Thin superglue with a little acetone so it flows
2. Load it into a syringe
3. Put one drop into the slot at the side, or under the fret if the slot is tight
4. Press the fret down
5. Hit it with accelerant and hold for about 30 seconds

Let go and it stays down. Any glue that shows at the edge comes off with a razor.

10. Drill bits

Two rules that go with them

Always use a sacrificial backing board when drilling all the way through. As the bit breaks out the back it tears a chunk of wood with it. A block held tight behind the workpiece prevents that entirely, and it's the single most common mistake seen on home drilled headstocks.

Enlarge holes in increments. Going from a quarter inch hole straight to something much larger gives the bigger bit nothing to center on, it wobbles, splinters and makes a mess. Step up gradually.

11. Cleaning a fretboard

For bare rosewood or ebony, naphtha. Which is simply lighter fluid. Where it is no longer sold under that name, Coleman type camping fuel is a workable substitute.

• It lifts oils, dirt and accumulated grime very effectively
• It evaporates quickly
• It has not damaged any finish it has been used on, lacquer, urethane and others. Oil finishes are the untested case, so be cautious there

A rag is usually enough; a toothbrush helps on a badly neglected board.

Soapy water gets recommended, and plenty of people do it without disaster. It isn't the recommendation here: water and bare wood is a combination worth avoiding when a solvent that evaporates will do the job better.

Naphtha and camping fuel are both highly flammable. Ventilation, and nothing burning nearby.

12. Oiling a fretboard, the frequency is the whole question

When: only when you can see the wood starting to dry out. A newer guitar with its natural oils intact needs nothing at all.

How often: typically every six to twelve months. More in a dry or hot climate, since heat drives the oils off faster. In a stable climate, less.

What: Howard's Feed-N-Wax from any hardware store, mineral oil, orange oil and beeswax. There is no need for gimmicky guitar branded products.

How: apply, leave 45 seconds to a couple of minutes depending how dry the board is, then wipe all of it off. Everything. You are replenishing what's gone, not adding a coating.

Plenty of valuable vintage instruments arrive at a shop with the fretboard ruined, purely because nobody did this occasionally across decades of ownership. Six months of neglect costs nothing. Twenty years does.

13. Microfiber cloths

Excellent for final cleaning and polishing. A single cloth at a music shop runs a few dollars. The identical thing comes in a twenty four pack at any hardware store for a fraction of that per cloth.

Buy the pack. Use the spares on the car.

14. Clamping at an awkward angle

Clamp across a curved or angled surface and the clamp wants to straighten itself out. The jaws slide along the curve, the pressure shifts, and it'll not stay where you need it.

1. Position the working clamp at the angle you actually need
2. Add a second clamp to stop the top of it moving
3. The bottom will still want to slide along the curve, so add a third to hold that
4. Now the working clamp cannot rotate, and you can tighten it properly

It takes some shuffling to find the right arrangement, and it is what makes it possible to clamp a body that has split through the horns, or any other shape a clamp simply won't sit on.

The thread running through all of this