Minimalism in guitar building.
As a family we’ve been on a journey toward minimalism. Our house is small and cosy, so we make sure everything serves a purpose and brings us joy. I’ve been learning about digital minimalism too, making sure that the time spent online (social media, web browsing) brings value instead of just sucking away my time.
During the last year or so of my guitar building I’ve been looking at how to approach guitar making from a minimalist viewpoint. In some ways I started there by necessity, only having the bare essential tools. I’ve added more and more tools to the arsenal in an effort to streamline the building process, but I can’t say I’m finding any more enjoyment in it all. Some parts of the process are just downright unpleasant or dangerous. When I make the effort to slow down and do things “the hard way”, I find the enjoyment factor goes back up.
I’ve come to realise that minimalism isn’t about the amount of things you own - or don’t own.
It’s about intentionality. It’s about looking at each part of the process and making choices about the best tool for the job. That doesn’t even mean the quickest tool for the job. It can sometimes mean changing the way you do things, or even what you do, to fit within a more narrow scope and set of tools.
Case in point: I’ve trimmed back the models I offer, and also the options I offer to customise each one. This does one thing - it allows me to trim back a lot of the tools I own “just in case”. There are things I found myself constantly ordering a slight variation on something I already owned in order to do a job.
But I’ve also made changes to the way I build all these models. It’s the same across guitars and basses - very hollow. I’m adding tools to my kit to do this a particular way, but it will allow me to do the work in a cleaner, safer way that will give me consistency better results. It’ll probably be slower in some ways, but quicker in the end.
All of this to say that I dislike routers (and yet I own three) and want to reduce my reliance on them, and I really dislike having tools and jigs hanging around that I might use once in a blue moon. Watch out for the big tool sale ;)
