Eleven-year GAL member Steve Kennel is a sculptor and printmaker who once worked in a newspaper pressroom and an autobody shop. Hes been a cabinetmaker, a dishwasher, a shelver of books in a library, a furniture maker, a caregiver, a foundry worker, and a welder.
▪ bio current as of 2023
2024
AL#151 p.71
Steve Kennel
▪ Welders use soapstone slips to mark on metal. They also work great on dark colored wood. Get them at welding supply places.
2023
AL#150 p.69
Steve Kennel
▪ Make try squares and bevel squares with clear-plastic blades.
2023
AL#150 p.70
Steve Kennel
▪ Easy alignment for guitar mold halves.
2023
AL#149 p.71
Steve Kennel
▪ Kennel is a sculptor. He sees a pile of scraps and misc hardware and builds a swanky-lookin’ fretwire roller. He’s on a roll. (Get it? Roll?) So he makes a guitar hanger that plugs into a workbench dog hole.
2023
AL#148 p.71
Steve Kennel
▪ Kennel builds an electric aluminum bending iron. It’s sturdy. Like, you could plow a field with it.
2022
AL#147 p.70
Steve Kennel
▪ Specialty files intended for sharpening steel tools are unexpectedly perfect for specific lutherie tasks. In this case we are talking about files made for sharpening brace-and-bit augers, and files made for sharpening Japanese pull saws.
2022
AL#146 p.69
Steve Kennel
▪ Post-It material comes in other forms besides notes, and they can be particularly useful for lutherie.
2022
AL#145 p.68
Steve Kennel
▪ Use the parts from pipe clamps to make super-powered bench hold-downs.
2021
AL#144 p.70
Steve Kennel
▪ Make a dead-blow hammer out of stuff you might find around the shop.
2021
AL#144 p.71
Steve Kennel
▪ How to take the warp, cup, and twist out of a plank. You attach scrap-wood rails that carry it through a planer in the proper orientation.
2021
AL#143 p.70
Steve Kennel
▪ Kennel modifies the often-seen but seldom-used Zyliss vise into a configuration that is specifically engineered for safely and securely holding guitar necks.
2021
AL#142 p.71
Steve Kennel
▪ Assure symmetry in shop templates by making two identical halves and bookmatching them.
2021
AL#142 p.68
Steve Kennel
▪ Sacrifice a wobbly old Workmate to make a nice guitar holding rig for your bench top.
2020
AL#141 p.68
Steve Kennel
▪ Plastic pipe scraps with sticky sandpaper .
2021
AL#142 p.2
Steve Kennel
▪ A quick and dirty Dobro made partly from yard sale stuff.
2020
AL#141 p.36
Steve Kennel
▪ Here’s a detailed drawing of a straightforward and ubiquitous mid-century, solid-wood, American-made guitar. This inexpensive model was the first instrument of a generation of would-be folkies and rockers. Not a classical, but certainly a classic.
2018
AL#134 p.66
Steve Kennel
▪ Make a wooden screwdriver for use on nice, shiny guitars.