Introduction

About a year ago at the age of twelve the idea of building a guitar first occurred to me. At the time it seemed like a near impossible project for somebody to attempt without years of woodworking skill and a workshop full of tools. And so I neglected the idea of building a guitar and instead started with a far less daunting project - building a ukulele. Building a ukulele allowed me to utilise all of the skills involved in constructing an acoustic guitar however with a much lesser amount of materials meaning less money wasted if things went wrong.

I started the project in February and finished it about six months later. The project needn't have taken me so long but I only worked on it on and off with long breaks in between. After the first month or so progress slowed greatly as I was disappointed in the quality of my work and so didn't much feel like continuing with it as I felt I could do a much better job if I just started again. 

To the left: the ukulele I built last year

More than a year after staring the ukulele project the the thought of building my own guitar occurred to me again. In the process of building the ukulele I had learnt a lot from my mistakes and had also built up a small collection of tools in my garage making me in a far better position to attempt building a guitar and so at the age of thirteen I decided that I'd attempt to build a guitar.

This blog is meant to encourage any one who is interested in to engaging in this hobby and to prove that you do not have to have an extensive workshop and wisdom in order to build a guitar.

The view of my "workshop":

Although I do have a few bench top power tools such as the drill press and the bandsaw these are not compulsory to build a guitar. This can be proven by reading  Steve Summerford's blog on building a guitar in his kitchen.

Where to begin?

Before you start spending money on materials it's a good idea to do some research  and allow some time to think about how you'll go about things. Personally, I did most of my research on the internet. There is are a large number of videos' blogs and websites that can be consulted when looking to build a guitar which outline in detail how to go about different processes in the build. The rest of my research was done last year when I visited a local luthier who makes acoustic guitars. The best type of research is always going to see someone whose done it before.

Here are a few things that I found useful:

Steve Summerford's Blog
OBrien Guitar's channel
A first-time builder's video
Atkin Guitars  (watching these videos is very useful in identifying the tones produced by different varieties of woods and to see the standards the professionals achieve)

Materials

The materials you choose can greatly influence the sound of the finished instrument. Because of this you should spend a bit of time learning the sound different types of woods produce. It is also important to remember that just because a certain specie of wood looks nice it doesn't mean it will produce a nice sound.

The woods that are used on guitars are referred to as tonewoods. The term is pretty self explanatory - woods that produce a tone when struck. Essentially they have musical qualities that make them suitable for their application on musical instruments.

For my guitar I chose to give it mahogany back and sides, mahogany neck and a spruce soundboard. The headstock veneers and end graft are made from flamed oak and american black walnut. Although they are not necessarily the most interesting species of wood they produce a good tone and are relatively inexpensive. I didn't want to go spending loads of money on materials for my first build in case things went wrong.

Here are the costs of the materials:

Mahogany back and sides: £26 - $43.86
Spruce soundboard- £25 - $42.17
Mahogany neck - the timber was found in my grandad's shed
Veneers - £2 a piece - $3.2

The Neck

The neck on my guitar was made from mahogany.

First pieces have to be cut from a solid block and glued up in a formation that allows space for the heel block and the headstock. I made the cuts for this using a handsaw as I didn't want to dull the blade on the bandsaw too much.

Above: the neck blank which I just squared off

After the pieces have been cut from the neck blank make sure their faces are completely flat so they are flush with each other when you glue them together. I regretted not spending enough time on this stage and so there are some small gaps on the heel block. You can flatten them using a block plane or/and a cabinet scraper. You can get cabinet scrapers off ebay for about £3 ($4.8) and I found this to be an incredibly useful tool.

Once the pieces have been glued up the rough profile of the neck needs to be cut out. I did this on my band saw but it can be done with hand saws ( I did it when I built my ukulele) it just takes a lot longer.

The rough profile of the neck being cut out:

Now the neck needs to be shaped. I did this using a variety of rasps and chisels. The rasp was useful for taking a lot of material off quickly and the chisels were used for shaping more delicately in areas like the heel block.

The initial shaping:

After a couple of hours work: 

I'll work more on the heel block and the headstock later on 

Headstock Veneers

The headstock of a guitar is often the guitar's 'centre piece' and therefore is often dressed in a veneer to make it nice to look at. Typically the guitar's headstock veneer will be about 1mm-3mm thick however on my guitar I went for a veneer about 0.6 mm thick in order to save a bit of money.

I chose american black walnut and flame oak for my headstock veneers as I thought they would contrast and compliment each other nicely when assembled in a wedge formation on the headstock. 

First, I placed the headstock flat on top of the veneers and then used a pencil to draw out the appropriate lines to cut around. I used an xacto knife to cut out the veneers and this seemed to work quite effectively. Although I managed to cut out the veneers successfully I would not recommend using a veneer of 0.6mm as it seemed to split very easily. It is probably worth the extra little bit of money to buy some thicker veneers that will be easier to work with and will possibly look better too. 

Side Bending Jig

In order to bend the sides of a guitar a jig has to be made to form them around. There are a variety of different jigs that can be made for guitar side bending and they all work in a similar way. Some jigs (the fox bender type) have the capacity to heat up the wood with a heat blanket however my jig did not need the capacity as I did the side bending by hand. The jig just served as something to check the guitar sides against and something to clamp them into whilst the moisture evaporated from them.

I constructed the jig out of 10mm thick plywood and dowel rods. The total cost of the materials was about £15 or $25.26 however I bought more materials than I needed so this cost could be radically improved.

Before constructing the jig I made a reliable template by laminating cardboard, sticking a paper template to the top and cutting to the line on the bandsaw. Making a reliable template like this means drawing out the shape of the guitar body is much easier.

I drew out the two side pieces and base of the jig onto the piece of plywood and then cut them out on the bandsaw. The side pieces of the jig are connected together using dowels approximately 120 mm in length.
In order to connect the sides I drilled the holes for the dowels undersized and then thinned the ends of the dowels by spinning them in the drill press and using a rasp. This created a nice tight compression fit.

In order to get the holes on the two side pieces in the same place I clamped them together meaning there was no need for careful measurement. Using the drill press means you can be sure the holes are completely square and so there won't be any sort of twist to the jig.

Below: the finished side bending jig

Note: one of the dowel rods does not extend flush with the side of the jig because I accidentally cut it too short and did not notice until it was too late. Luckily it is long enough to hold itself snugly in to both sides of the mould. 

Bending Iron

I chose to bend my sides by hand on a bending iron however didn't want to fork out the vast amount of money to buy a commercial one like the sort sold on websites like touchstone tonewoods and Stewart Macdonald. Instead,  I chose to throw together my own bending iron to save money.

For my bending iron all I used was a Bosch heat gun (sourced for free from my grandad) and a piece of 2 inch aluminium. A thicker piece of pipe made out of steel like a bit of scaffold pole would've been ideal but i just used what I had to hand. Luckily, the piece of pipe fitted snugly over the nozzle of the heat gun (where the hot air is blown out of) and so there was no need for any complex jig to hold the heat gun and the pipe together.

Finally I clamped the assembly to the workbench securely. The only drawback to this method I found was that you had to be careful no to walk directly in front of the end of the pipe as a lot of heat was emitted there however this could be resolved by stuffing some tin foil inside the pipe.

Here is the assembly:

Side Bending

Once I had assembled my make-shift side bender out of some pipe and a heat gun it was time to bend the sides. The wood I used for the sides of my guitar was African mahogany as it is quite easy to work with and relatively inexpensive (£26 or $43.75 for the back and sides).

Before bending, the wood had to be thinned down from 5mm to about 2.5mm. I did this using a combination of hand planes, scrapers and sandpaper however if you have one a thickness sander would be much quicker and probably more accurate too.

When buying hand tools such as planes it's generally a good idea to avoid the budget variations. Instead spend a little bit more money on midrange tools. I found that Stanley and Record planes seemed to work very well and had the right quality to price ratio for my application.

To remove most of the material I used a Record smoothing plane (no.4 I think). This worked well and cost about £30/ $50.53.

I haven't got any pictures of the actual bending process however a good video to watch if you would like to learn how before you start bending is O'Brien Guitar's video on the subject. It might also be a good idea to have a go on a few test pieces too before starting to bend on the actual guitar sides. This will give you a good idea of what the wood's characteristics are and may avoid unnecessary cracking etc. when bending the real thing.

The bending iron - read about it here.

External Jig

Originally I hadn't planned on constructing an external mould for the guitar as I hadn't anticipated such a large amount of spring back when I released the sides from the side bending jig. In order to keep the shape of the sides relatively true to the original template I decided it would be necessary to construct a very simple external mould just to hold the sides in the correct shape when gluing on the kerfing, back, front and sides.

It is important that you glue the kerfing in to the guitar body whilst it is in the external mould otherwise the glue joints will be strained if you try and force the body in to the mould afterwards.

I constructed the mould from the leftover plywood that I used to construct the side bending jig. In truth, the plywood was actually a bit to thin for this application however I was reluctant to spend yet more money on materials just to put together jigs.

First, the sheet of plywood had to be split in two to make the two halves of the mould. Then, I drew around the template and added in the appropriate lines to cut along leaving space to attach clamps to hold the sides in the mould.

Here is the finished mould with the sides of the guitar held in it:

Kerfing

In order to attach the soundboard and back to the sides, the gluing surface area needs to be increased. In order to do this, a lining with a series of cuts or 'kerfs' is glued in which effectively quadruples the gluing surface area. Linings like this can be bought from luthier suppliers such as  Touchstone Tonewoods or Stewart Macdonald. However, buying these linings from a luthier supplier seemed quite expensive for what you got and so I decided to make my own.

There are various kerfing cutting jigs that can be made for use in conjunction with a bandsaw however as a result of three bandsaw blades snapping in 4 weeks I decided that I would cut my kerfing by hand.
I did this with a mitre box and a hand saw with a block clamped in place that kept the kerfing strip held firmly against the edge of the mitre box. These can be had relatively cheaply.

The cuts made in the strip should be evenly spaced (mine were about 7mm apart) and should be cut nearly al the way through the wood making it flexible enough to bend around the tight radiuses of the guitar's body.

To clamp the kerfing strips in place I used clothes pegs. These are perfect as only a small amount of clamping pressure needs to be applied and they can be bought in great quantities quite inexpensively.

A photo of the kerfing strips drying up:

Here are some close ups of the kerfing strip glued into the guitar body: