guitar builds 10 - 13

Apologies for leaving you hanging for a while. We had a death in the family and that has taken over my life for the last 6 weeks. So here's a mini report of the last 4 sessions.

Session 10 - routed the cavities for the pots to go in the upper and lower bouts of the body.
Session 11 - routed channels from pot cavities to cone chamber for wiring, drilled hole for jack socket and drilled soundholes in back of body. made small blocks and glued them in the cone recess to support it at the correct height.
Session 12 - Fine sanded neck and body then rubbed thinned down nitro-cellulose lacquer into body (two coats to seal it) and about 6 coats on the bak of neck and headstock. Fine wire wool brought the neck up as smooth as a baby's bum - nah smoother.

Session 13 - one of the scariest - spray painting the body and headstock front. About 10 coast at 15 minutes intervals to build up a decent thickness. I was worried about my crappy spraying techinique causing nasty runs on the guitar and sure enough I managed it. Martin assured me it wasn't a problem as we'll rub it down flat before finally polishing it to a high gloss. seems hard to believe it possible but I've seen his finished results and have confidence it will all be fine.

guitar build session 9

Missed another week but last wednesday I was back in the workshop with Martin my luthier/tutor. More neck work. A slight radius was sanded on the fretboard surface. Next, the frets. Starting at the body end of the neck I cut pieces of fretwire allowing a couple of mm overhang. The pre-slotted slots were gently cleaned of sawdust with a fine saw blade. The fretwire was gentyl presses into the slot. Using a small hammer head as a sort of punch, with masking tape to cushion it, using a mallet, the frets were tapped into place starting at one end and working across the face to the other end then the surplus snipped off. The ends of the frets are prevented from springing up with a drop of superglue on the them which sort of gets sucked into the slot. The hammer head was used to apply pressure for about 30 seconds until the glue had set. When all fitted, a file was used to smooth the ends flush with the neck edge. Then running the file lengthways at an angle, a bevel was put on them. The rest of the session was used to further shape the back of the headstock. Photos to come later.

new music track

At last I've been able to do some recording again. Been so busy with making amps and stuff that music making has taken a back seat. I started a project with a pal a while ago. He sings in a band called The Choppers who are out in Cambodia. He had a song idea and we played around with some riffs and managed to knock out a punky/rocky/bluesy sort of number. Took a few takes and it's a bit rough and ready (as I like it). Two guitar tracks on it are played on one of my CBGs and the vocals were done through my ex-military bakelite headset mic - hence the thin sound quality of the vocals. I've put it upo on Soundcloud - here's the link if you want to listen to it.

http://soundcloud.com/smojomusic/mayday

guitar build session 8

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.

turning vintage radios into amplifiers

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!

guitar build session 7

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.

I spent the rest of the session roughing out the back of the neck. We drew lines down it at specific points as a guides to cut back to. Just using a spokeshave and a coarse rasp, I reduced the back of the neck to a sort of triangular profile. The ridge of that was taken off leaving a sort of flat topped triangular shape, then those two ridges taken down so we now have an approximate D shaped profile. I ended the session there. Doesn't sound much but it was four hours of hard graft. I reckon we might be about half way through the project now.

guitar build session 6

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.

Next job was to route a narrow channel for the truss rod. Just wide and deep enough to take it with very little space around it. We put in the dual action rod then glued and clamped the fretboard in position. Doesn't sound a lot but it took the whole afternoon. Here's a photo just before we put fretboard on.

guitar build session 5

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.

Next we started on the neck. I'd bought a hefty plank of maple. We drew on the approximate shape and as the plank is thick enough, decided to make it a one-piece neck/angled headstock. So we marked on the angle of the headstock and rough planed the bevel that will be the top of it. The idea is to cut away most of the surplus wood first with a jigsaw, then make the final shape with router and spokeshave. Attempting to rip down the length of the neck proved a bit of a disaster. I broke two jigsaw blades and was just getting nowhere. Maple is a very hard wood! I suggested we end the session early and I would take the plank back to my workshop to rip down on my bandsaw. We did a few other small jobs - cutting the pre-slotted fretboard to length and marking a few things up to round off. Progress a bit slow but still satisfying. It's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel yet as there is a lot to do but I rest assured and imagine the day when I will take the finished guitar home, plug it into my new vox valve amp and enter the kingdom!

guitar build session 3 and 4

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 cigar box guitar Christmas

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.