As I mentioned in my other thread (kiln vs air drying), I'm planning out how I want to go about tooling up to build guitars. I've been reading Cumpiano's book and others and browsing the StewMac site to see what sort of modern tools are available. My shop is tooled mostly for turning and some flat work, so I'm fully aware that I'm delving into another genre of tools that will probably get expensive and mostly won't have any other purpose than guitar building.
Anyway, I'm interested in doing setup and repair work on existing guitars and most of the tools I'd need to do that I will eventually need for building my own. Seems like a logical step would be to start getting those tools together and doing setup work on friends' guitars to get some practice. Next step would be to start taking on some work from the local guitar store. The owner used to have a guy that did this some, but at the moment he doesn't have or know of anyone locally to do the work. Ideally this work would help to fund future tool purchases so I can increase the scope of luthierie work I can do and eventually get me into building my own.
For you folks that have been through this before, does this sound like the right direction?
Another thing I've thought about is taking a couple of days here and there off work to 'apprentice' with a luthier. There aren't any in this area that I know of - the closest I know of are maybe Warsaw, MO and a new one in Conway, AR. I haven't asked them yet, but if y'all know of any others close to Mountain Home, AR that might be willing to let me shadow on occasion please let me know.