Workshop

Electric guitars have been built in all kinds of rooms, from living rooms to fully-equipped workshops. I even know somebody who built an electric bass on chairs and the floor of his living room.

Ideally, though, you should have a room of your own, with plenty of light, where you can leave things without having to worry about them and where producing dust and noise won't get you into trouble. The room should also be dry, with a relative humidity of 50 to 70 per cent. Because wood - and in particular a musical instrument - reacts to changes in humidity, any such changes should be minimal. Buying a hygrometer will therefore be an absolute must. It doesn't have to be an expensive hair hygrometer; a cheap one will do as well. What matters is that you keep an eye on humidity and do not totally ignore it.

If your workshop is inside a heated house, for instance in a basement room, humidity will most certainly not be a problem. Things are different, though, when using an external workplace without proper insulation of the walls against ground moisture. In such rooms humidity is often as high as or even higher than the humidity outside.

Depending on the weather, humidity can then vary between 50 per cent on dry, windy days and 80 per cent and higher on close or rainy days. In very moist rooms humidity can even be between 90 and 100 per cent. If a room is heated during winter, humidity will be lower.

Electric air dehumidification is unfortunately an expensive option, (a) due to the cost of buying the appliance (1) and (b) because of the energy costs. In some cases they will, however, be needed if your guitar is to be of good quality. Alternatively, if your workshop is too moist, you could also move the wood between the workshop and a drier place in the house, taking the wood to

1 the workshop only when you work on it and then taking it back to the drier place for storage.

A workbench would be an ideal work surface, but basically any stable table can be used. Small workbenches that can be folded up and allow clamping a great number of differently-shaped objects also make good work surfaces.

Another important thing to consider is the height of the work surface. Most of the work surfaces I have come across are far too low. Since most of the jobs are carried out standing, your back will soon start aching if you have to constantly bend down to work; as a result, not only you but also the quality of your work will suffer. The ideal height for the work surface required for guitar building is hip level. For example, a person 6 feet (1.83m) tall should have a work surface just over 3 feet (96cm) high. Before you start working, adjust the height of your workbench to suit your height, using bricks or wooden blocks if necessary. A lower work surface is, of course, better for jobs that require a lot