meh

Building my first guitar – part I

It has been quite long since I first considered building my own guitar. It has also been long since I first wanted to get into woodworking/sculpting. I’ve finally taken it beyond the aspiration phase to actual execution. I will be documenting the process in a series of posts, of which this is the first.

I began this journey by reading a lot about guitar building online, browsing different forums and reading construction logs. I also spent much time looking through guitar-making related products in shops like StewMac, Luthiers Mercantile International, Warmoth etc.

The next step, that took about a year an a half, was deciding to go for it. I bought Melvyn Hiscock’s Make Your Own Electric Guitar, which I think is very well written. It is full of transcribed personal experience, that will save you time and errors, and guide you through the entire build.

Beginning to gather supplies, I started to design and choose what my guitar will be like. At first I considered making it an SG clone. I really like the SG and was avid about getting one after I first tried it. I then decided that given the effort put into building my own guitar, I’d rather try a more interesting custom design. And thus, the very fun part of sketching out guitars in pencil has began.

Eventually I came up with 3 designs that I liked enough to refine and illustrate:

and the chosen finalist:

I decided to go with Mahagony for both the neck and the body, Rosewood fretboard, Gibson scale length (not accurate in the sketches) and a two humbuckers setup.

My next decision was not use power tools, unless I will absolutely have to. The are few reasons for choosing so. First, I do not own a router, a sander or any other of the woodworking associated power tools, and I don’t know anyone who does and can lend me his. Second, I’m going to be building the guitar in a room in an apartment – meaning I have to go low on noise and mess. I hope that it will end up as a wise choice, and I don’t mind the extra time and effort that manual tools require.

Once I had everything at hand, things became more interesting. I started by cutting an angled headstock out of the neck blank using a Japanese Ryoba saw. I followed the method outlined in this tutorial.

I then planed both the cut part and the rest of the neck. When I saw the effect of the plane on the sawn wood, I finally realized what planing is all about. I glued up the parts and clamped everything overnight:

I made my first building mistake in the way I clamped the parts. Applying perpendicular pressure on an angle filled with glue caused the parts to slid and the result was not as I have first planned:

The result however, was far from bad. First, I had enough room for mistakes, as the neck still has to be narrowed down and shaped. Minor inaccuracies in this early stage can be easily handled. Moreover, the slipped parts have created just the correct width for the headstock, meaning I will have less work when shaping it.

That’s as far as I have gotten. Next, I’m going to make more planning and measurements in order to get the scale length right, and then I will be working on routing the truss rod route and cutting the rough shape of the body.