Thursday, January 24, 2008

What can I say about cigar box guitars?

I'm sitting wondering what I can say next. Well I was e-mailing another budding CBG builder and telling him what appealed to me about this business. It's so satisfying for me, I love being creative in general so what's nice about this is the whole process. I like recycling so it's cool when I can find stuff to make into an instrument and I like things that are a bit different and quirky. I enjoy the woodworking and being able to design something unique, then seeing my idea slowly emerge into reality. I love making music and playing guitars so I get a new toy to explore too. I like photography and writing about stuff so doing this blog is nice. Now I'm making some contacts with other CBGers and they are a great bunch to converse with. Lastly when someone gets one of my guitars and I see the excitement and enthusiasm that it generates, I get a huge buzz.

Three guitars have recently found new homes so I need to get busy making a few more. I have two necks in the first stage of preparation. One is a piece of pitch pine. It was varnished on one side so I've left that on and just planed up the other three sides. It's got some old character to it and nice grain. I can't decide yet whether to use that as the fretboard side or the back. The other is a piece of light oak and I might give it the dark stain treatment like the last one I made.

I have a good stock of nice boxes and can't decide which to use. I've a nice green Ramon Allones box which will be one of them. My first finished CBG was one and was meant for me but a work colleague fell in love with it at first sight and bought it of me. I'm a bit possessive when I find a real good one like the Indian Tabac box shown here. I am using one to keep my harmonicas in and another is reserved for a cracking CBG for myself one day. I'll post some pictures when they are taking shape.