Missed a week of building last week. This week it was all on the neck again. Final filing of neck back profile and sanding to a nice finish. Drilled out holes and installed the mother of pearl fret marker dots and edge dots. Drilled out holes for machine heads. Still a fair bit to do but I put the body and neck lossley together so I could see what it's looking like. Starting to get exciting now.
So as well as building a more conventional 6-stringer guitar, you might be pleased to hear about something more in line with cigar box mentality - i.e. taking something that was meant for another purpose and making it into something more fun and appropriate for making your own music. My latest adventure is taking old vintage radios from the 60s and 70s, hacking into the wiring, adding a 1/4 inch jack socket and turning it into a small amp. These things are so cool, why has it taken me so long to get into it? The older radios like these have a fairly decent power output. At half volume with a guitar plugged in they have a pretty clean sound but crank them up full and they overdrive nicely - rather like a small valve amp. Loud enough for your home and maybe enough to annoy the neighbours. They make great practise amps but just look so cool. I've done a few videos, take a look and see what you think. This one is a "keeper" though!
I'm a week behind posting this and this week I will not be doing any work on it. So last week was all about the neck again. The fretboard had been glued on so now needed trimming back to the neck profile using the router table and a small cutter with wheel guide following the shape of the neck. The body end of the neck cut to the correct length and shaped to fit the body "pocket". So now I could put it in place and see how the guitar is shaping up as a whole.
All about the neck this week. First job was to attach headstock template, then using a rasp bit in a table mounted router, to route the shape of the headstock around it. Then attach a straight edge template along one side of the neck and route that down to size, same with the other edge. Then some real hard work. To shape the back of the angled headstock roughly, I used a gouge chisel to chop away the surplus, then took it down to almost final shape using a hand rasp. Next we took a lot of the surplus off the back of the neck with an electric planer.
Had my 5th session yesterday. Feeling very tired this week after many hours of sanding down walls and woodwork in my lounge ready for redecorating, plus running around hospital visiting. So it was a welcome return to sanity but at the same time, I couldn't put 100% into the sawing and sanding that was involved. This week involved fixing small templates to the body to route out neck pocket and a cavity for the lipstick neck-position pickup. I'm starting to gain confidence in the use of the router, always had a slight fear of them based on my lack of experience. The key to it is to only take small 2-3mm cuts each time.
So I need to catch up on my posting for the reso guitar build. Session 3 we fixed the template to the body with a couple of panel pins in places where the hole won't show. Using the router, I followed the contour of the template, taking about 2 mm off on each pass until eventually I had almost cut through the block. We then turned it over and using a router bit with a wheel guide running along the new shaped edge, I cut through the remaining bit and seperated the new body shape from the block. At last it's starting to look like a guitar. Next job was to cut a hole in the template where the cone is gonna sit. I took the body home to do some homework on it over the Christmas perion. Basically just rough drilled the main part of the cone well out using my drill press, to save effort on the router.
Session 4 - we attached the template again and now following the hole we had cut in it, slowly routed out the well for the cone. We also rough sanded the front and back to get a flat surface across the whole body. We then used a small concave router bit on the outside edges to produce a gentle rounded prifile. I took it home again and spent about an hour sanding down the outer edge and front and back nice and smooth. Next session we start on the neck.
Happy Christmas to you all wherever you are. It was this time of year when all this started for me. I guess it must have been 6 years ago. I saw a cigar box guitar on Ebay - loved the look of it and my wife said she would buy it for me for Christmas. If you've been following this blog, then you'll know the rest of the story. Well what a great story it's been. It has led to so many interesting and fun things. I've learnt how to make cigar box guitars and play them (reaonably). It's got me back into another hobby from my youth - electronics which has led to making amps, mics, oscillators etc. It's opened up new avenues of music to explore. I've learnt how to make small movies and upload to youtube. I've made quite a few new friends and in particular one very good friend. We've seen a UK CBG fest emerge and get better every year for three years now. It has been a truly exciting, stimulating and creatively rewarding pastime for me and I know it has too for many other people because I have met some who have had similar experiences and I've had some wonderful feedback via comments and emails.
So if you have just found this site and just discovering the world of cigar box guitars and homegrown music and instruments - you are in for a a real treat my fiends. When I turn on the news, when I look around me, there is so much misery, mess, pain and worry around us. The world has truly gone crazy and if you're not careful it will drag you down too. If you feel this like I do, you need something positive, uplifting and insipirational to pull you through. This whole cigar box guitar stuff is not crazy at all (though some may think so). It has been a light in the darkness for me. So I thoroughly recommend you immerse yourself in it too. Buy a guitar, learn to play it, learn to make one yourself, meet other like-minded people (you're a great bunch) and just enjoy being creative and for a while you can switch off from the misery and worry.
Thanks for being here, sharing and joining in this journey with me. Hope you all have a great Christmas and let's hope next year gets better.
Second session of my course where I am building a solid body six string reso guitar. Didn't realise how much preparation work needs to be done before actually working on the guitar itself. This week we cut the mahogany plank in two. We sat the two halves side by side with a small gap and using a slotted template on top we routed the two edges simultaneously to provide smooth faces to be glued. Quicker and easier that trying to plane them. They were glues up and cramped together to make the block of wood for the body.
Next job, made a template for body and headstock by tracing the drawing onto some thin MDF. We cut them out with a jigsaw, then smoothed the edges to a perfect shape with rasps and sandpaper. These will be fixed to the body block and headstock piece and used to run a router around to cut out the shapes. It took us pretty much the whole session to do these jobs. Another session next week then a break over Christmas. What I've learned so far - the need to make a good drawing and templates. The simple use of a router to provide straight edges accurately and easily. I'll be digging my own out now I know what can be done with it.
I mentioned in my last post that I was going start on a guitar building course to build a 6 string reso cone, solid electric guitar. OK I know this blog is supposed to be about CBGs but there are many of you who are also interested in more conventional guitars too and learning some general building tips. The idea is that I learn some new skills and build myself something really special. It's loosely based on a National resolectric but with some of my own tweaks to it. I've done a rough photoshop job to show you what it might look like.
I will be building it in half day sessions, roughly once a week. So the first day we headed off to John Boddy's timber yard near Boroughbridge. There's a big warehouse with lots of planks of interesting timber. Martin, my tutor helped me select a piece of maple for the neck/headstock and mahogany for the body. Mahogany was chosen because it is a fairly light hardwood which should emphasise the bass end of the tonal range to balance the rather toppy reso cone. I also bought myself another maple plank that will cut down into 4 nice CBG necks for future builds. Was surprised how relatively cheap maple is. The neck plank cost about £8 and the CBG plank about a fiver. Back at Martin's we started to draw up a full size plan of the guitar. Didn't quite finish it this week. We ordered some hardware too - truss rod, reso cone and plate and a pre-cut rosewood fretboard. Next session we finish the drawing, cut the mahogany in two and glue both halves together to make a wide plank for the body. Probably start cutting out the neck too.
It's been a bit of a frustrating time here and an exciting one too. Still a bit quiet on my CBG front. Much as I love 'em, there are many other interesting distractions going on in my life. First the frustrations - I bought some cool looking lipstick pups, cheap, with the intention of building myself a super duper CBG with frets and a proper magnetic pickup. Got as far as cutting the neck from a piece of old shelving when my bandsaw blade snapped. So that one went on on hold.
As you will have noticed, I've been heavily into the electronics side of things. Not a million miles away from the cigar box guitar ethos of making something cool and musical out of junk or stuff that was never meant for that purpose. So I started "bending" an old casio keyboard. Found a cool distortion bend, drilled holes and mounted the switch and two pots. Working one minute - the next it was just making a horrid buzz. Messed about but can't seem to fix it. Maybe I burnt out something. So that's on hold too. Moved on to a new electronics project - making an envelope follower from the Nic Collins book. You can connect a sound source like a guitar or CD player and it's supposed to light some LEDs when the signal peaks or dips. Got the preamp part made but can I get the LEDs to come on when they should? - no, on hold too.
So what are the exciting bits. Well I had an great weekend in Manchester with my mate who had organised the Hollowbelly gig at his local pub. Great atmosphere and the whole thing went down well. Hollowbelly belted out his excellent punk blues material whilst entertaining us with some funny stories in between. The support act was great too, three local people who got together with slide guitar (and CBG), african drum and cigar box bass to play some nice bluesy stuff. Lot's of time to chat about music stuff and do a bit of jamming back at my mates too.
I bought an old ex-forces bakelite communicator set which is a chest mounted microphone and headphones. I was looking for an old telephone receiver to make a distortion mic and I found this. Might be ww2 but if not, will probably be at least 50 years old. I dismantled the set to make three mics, the chest mic I'll keep for myself, the two headphone mics I might eventually sell on. They look so cool and make fantastic hand held mics for vocals or harp where you want a bit of an old-timey, mildly distorted sound. If I get time I'll post a photo or two.
Finally (please forgive me but let me explain) I'm about to build a solid body electric 6 string guitar. As I said I do love CBGs but I suffer from GAS (guitar acquisition syndrome) where I have to keep getting a fix with a new guitar. I see something cool and I want it! Yes my friends you know what I mean. The explanation will justify the diversion from 3 strings, a stick and a box guitar. For some time I've wanted the personal satisfaction of building a "proper" guitar. Something really cool and unusual. Also to take my luthier skills a little higher and get to grips with the more complex elements of guitar building. There's a local guy who runs courses on guitar building on a one-to-one basis. I went to see him this week to talk about starting with him. My initial idea was to make something based on the old guyatone solids of the 50s/60s. They look so cool with their simple retro shape and colours. But I do have a really nice Harmony Stratotone reissue that fits the bill so what to build instead? Then the bulb lit up in my head. A solid body reso similar to the National supro reso guitars. A bit of research showed that they make a modern version still. So my design will be based on that but with a bit of the guyatone look about it. It will have an under-saddle piezo and a single coil neck pickup. I've done a very rough photoshop job to get some idea of what it might look like and here it is. I'm starting the build this wednesday. We're going off to a timber yard to chosse the wood and then back to cut it up and glue the two body halves - can't wait! I'm gonna keep a record of my progress and put something on here so if you're interested, come back and take a look regularly. It might just get me inspired enough to get cracking with my lipstick pick-upped CBG too.
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