I came late to the "kits and plans" party, so I'll just add a few cents.
We've talked about making a kit, and there are a bunch of problems. One of the biggest is the size of the market. Realistically, how many could we sell in a year? Five maybe? For what price? Let's say a round $1000. The parts and wood alone now would cost us a substantial part of that, not to mention the time prepping them to the point that the end user could put them together. Another problem is tools. We have a shopful of tools, and we pretty much use most of them them down to the last few hours of assembly. In particular the metal lathe is something I can't really do without. Sure, it's possible to "field fit" the tail bearing, but it would be a long and arduous process - hours and hours and hours to get it "just so", and I doubt the finish would be as smooth as the lathe can cut it. The collection of hand tools and jigs and specialized bits and pieces... again, possible to do without, but not easy. Instructions: what to do? Show them how we do it with our specialized tools that we've accumulated over the last decade and a half? The kit builder isn't going to buy hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth of tools just to build an instrument. Figure out an alternative method? Testing, testing, trial and error, try again... I don't think so. It was hard enough figuring it out the first time. ;-) OK, that's my 2 cents. I know the conversation already peaked, so I'm not expecting a response, but I just had to put my oar in. Alden
