No one is bending your arm to buy their jigs or fixtures, Joe. Every luthierie operation done with a power tool can be accomplished with a hand tool - you might have to develop some skills to do the job, and it might take more time than with a power tool & jig, but doable.
That said, the last thing I want to do with my time is try to source high grade waterproof 1-1/8" MDF for a radius dish, make up the jig for the router, then end up looking like a 6'2" granola bar after spending an hour or two on a hot summer day milling a couple dishes out. I can get both 15' and 28' radius dishes for under $200 delivered, and that is totally worth it to avoid the task.
The flip side of that is a total lack of suitable body molds from commercial vendors...for about two hours of labor and $50 in materials, I can make up both mold and bending form for a new body shape. In this case, the time spent is worth the lost opportunities (what I could have done in that time) because I get the best solution.
This is why it's worth visiting a couple shops to get an idea of what other small shop builders are doing as part of the spool-up to build. John Greven cranks out up to 70 instruments a year in a shop without CNC, minimal jigs or fixtures, and no helper or jobbing out components. His shop has about half the stationary tools in it that you'll see in the average hobbyist home wood shop.
As to manual methods, the Cumpiano book is very dated when it comes to where the SOTA has gone for many small shop builders, but nearly all of the processes shown are done with hand tools or with very simple, shop made jigs and fixtures. Def worth getting a copy for that alone.
I am going to guess that most folks that build more than a handful of instruments end up with a very different view of StewMac or LMII offerings than the tyro trying to equip for their first. I used to think, "Holy Crap! that's expensive!" when looking at diamond fret files; now, after hundreds of fret jobs done with one of them, I think "How can they offer this for just $70?"
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