"Fence" guitar almost done, learned a few things along the way

My "fence board" guitar is nearly done, it is playable and sounds pretty good. I really like the neck-mount design, but it is obvious that it could use some refinement. I did take a couple photos along the way, but I seemed to have misplaced my compact-flash reader. I'll post them soon.

Encouraged by the results, I decided to try something different. I started to build this guitar:

http://www.liutaiomottola.com/instruments/Ipomoea.htm

Or at least something like it. This guitar will also be made of el-cheapo Cedar boards.

One of the interesting thing about the Ipomoea guitar is its soundboard bracing. It is mentioned that Tacoma guitars used the same design. So I did a little bit of research on Tacoma guitars and found lots of interesting info, especially this:

http://www.fender.cl/other_brands/tacoma/tacoma05Catalog.pdf

You can see on pages 16-17 that the bracing is indeed similar to that of the Ipomoea guitar.

On page 27, there is a nicely-designed mount for an electric guitar-style neck. This gave me an idea on how to improve my design.

What else have I learned?

1) I suck at documenting my build processes

2) I am unlikely to improve

3) Everything I could possibly come up with, someone else has done and documented on the internet

4) What does not get documented, and is of the most value, is what "does not work"... all those things that are tried but didn't work out.

5) For me, I have found that most of the things that "do not work" has to do with the tools I am using. As such, documenting that probably won't be of much help to anyone, with the exception that...

6) Buying cheap wood and expensive tools will likely result in a better guitar than expensive wood and cheap tools. You can only use the wood once. You can use the tools over-and-over again until you get it right.


Enough for now, I'm going to go play my fence ;-)

Document, document, document

I'm helping a friend build a guitar. He doesn't want to spend a lot of money on wood until he has some idea of what he is doing (quite reasonably). I started to think about the 2x4 guitar and other ways to use "cheap" wood.

I wondered over to Home Depot and looked for the cheapest wood they had. While not the cheapest, per se, I pulled out several cedar 5'x6"x5/8" "fence" board for ~$1.80/each that where perfectly straight-grained & quarter-sawed. I ran them through my planner. The tap-tone is good.

Encouraged by the results, I picked put a couple more boards. I grabbed a wildly figured one for the back, and straight-grained ones for the sides, braces, etc. Looks like it will take 5 boards to build an entire body (~$9).

Of course I'd still need a neck. Looking around, I wondered if I could temporarily "borrow" the neck off my cheap "pawn shop" electric guitar. A chunk of 2x4, a band saw, and several clamps later, it looks like it is indeed feasible to use an electric guitar neck on an acoustic guitar.

So here we are a couple hours later and I have a 1/2 finished guitar and not a single photo. If it sounds like a $9 guitar, no real loss. If it sounds like a $900 guitar, I'd really wish I would have documented everything I've done so far...

Free bass guitar plans

This looks interesting: http://liutaiomottola.com/instruments/Tinozza.htm

Pieces and Parts

Lots a nice stuff for guitar 4. Redwood sound board (supposed to sound half-way between Spruce and Cedar), Mexican rosewood back/sides, Madagascar rosewood fret board, and a Honduran mahogany neck.

I've planned down the sound board, back, and sides. That's about it so far. Much work to be done!

Guitar 3, the $5 wonder

So I did a bunch of research for nice and expensive wood for which I'd build guitar 3. I saw a couple very pretty guitars that had douglas fir sound boards. I had read that douglas fir is an excellent tone wood, but for some unknown reason not many luthiers use it.

I ended up buying very pretty Mexican rosewood (Palo Escrito) for backs and sides. Since I didn't do a perfect job of bending the sides on guitar 1, I thought I should practice on some scrap wood. I also had just bought a new planer, and decided to run some scrap wood through that to make sure it wouldn't eat my pretty and expensive wood. I had a couple of cheap 2x4's laying around, which are just the right width for a guitar side, I could slice one up with my band saw, run it through the planer, and kill two birds with one stone...

I was really impressed with how the sides came out. I figured, why not?, and sliced up & planned a couple more pieces & joined them together for a sound board & back. I cut a length in three and laminated them together alternating the grain to make a neck. I then cut out strips to make the soundboard and back bracing.

I tried making a "2x4" bridge and fret board, but that didn't turn out so well. I grabbed a spare piece of oak for the bridge & fret board.

I glued it all together and much to my surprise, this is a really decent sounding guitar.

I had spent $200 just for wood for a guitar, and ended up making one out of $5 worth of wood. The final cost was about $66, 50% of which was the Gotoh tuners (black was on sale ;-).






Update: Cheyenne Appleby is now the proud owner of this guitar.

Guitar 2, a.k.a. I hate polyurethane glue

Guitar 2 was quite a bit more adventurous than guitar 1. This one has a western red cedar top, a "scarf joint" style maple neck, "hand made" ambrosia maple laminte back & sides, and a douglas fur "frame" that the back is screwed to (see photos below). The bolt-on-back is very, very handy for working on the guitar - it takes just a couple of minutes to have full access to the sound board bracing and the neck block.

I picked up some very pretty sequenced matched ambrosia maple laminate. I believe it was about $30 for enough to make the sides and back. The sides are all maple, the laminate strips were 3 1/2 inches wide & about 36 inches long, perfect for making guitar sides. For the back, I carefully aligned several pieces of laminate so that the grain lined up, and glued them onto both sides of a thin piece of birch plywood.

To make the sides, glueing together several pieces of laminate is much easier than bending a solid piece of wood (or plywood, for that matter). The only problem is that I used a polyurethane glue, as had read on the internet that would be better than using aliphatic resins (a.k.a. Tite Bond). Lets just say I was not happy with the results. I ended up making several cuts into the laminate with a razor blade and squeezing in aliphatic resin. I'm still not thrilled with the results, but it is tolerable. I don't expect this guitar to out live me.

Still, it is a pretty guitar. As I'm dialing in the action, I'm more and more pleased with the tone and volume as well. It is much warmer than guitar 1, but that is expected using cedar vs spruce for the sound board.

Guitar 1, a.k.a. "beginner's luck"

My first guitar sounds simply amazing. It has crystal-clear tone, great volume, low action, and the intonation is close to perfect (easily corrected with a slight compensation to the saddle). This is a really good sounding guitar. Certainly not the best sounding guitar I've ever heard, but significantly better than any "off the shelf" guitar I've seen (and better than many of the >$1,000 Martins/Taylors/etc I've heard).

It has an A grade stika spruce top & bracing, Indian rosewood fret board & bridge, lauan plywood back & sides, maple/oak laminate neck, and Gotoh tuners.

The top, bracing, fret board, fret wire, bridge, and truss rod were purchased from Steward McDonald. I bought the Lauan plywood at Mr Plywood here in Portland ($5 ;-), and the maple & oak for the neck at Home Depot (~$20 for both). Total cost in raw materials was just under $200.

I don't really remember exactly how long it took me to build, but it was in the neighbourhood of 2-3 weeks.

This is a pretty standard "Martin style" dreadnought, about the only things that a really unique about it is the body is a bit deeper than normal (4 inches) and the neck is bolted on, not glued. I'm a big fan of the bolt-on-neck now, I've done this on all of my guitars. It makes it so much easier to make adjustments, and does not appear to negatively impact the sound quality. I can always glue it later if I wish...

Without further rambling, here are a few photos...