The aim of this blog is to show how to make an acoustic guitar . Before we get into the nuts and bolts of it, we have to look ahead a little , to see what we will need in the way of tools required for the job ahead. It is not my aim to send people broke by investing heavily in big equipment, but rather choose a few indespensible hand tools and outsource parts of the work that requires heavier tools.

                            A solid workbench and a closed in area is a good place to start.My first guitar was made in the tropics, under a house, and I think I could count the number of tools I had on one hand. I had to leave the workbench clean after every time I used it. This first guitar took me a year to make, but it suffered I guess from being moved around so much while still in the construction phase. At that time (’74),there were no cheap benches around, but now there are $120 ones from hardware stores.You just have to assemble it yourself. These benches are plenty big enough to do guitar work on.

                         The quickest way to make progress on making a guitar would be to purchase all the wood precut to approximate size, and then do the marking out and design. The tools you will most need are:

1. Saws: tenon saw, fretsaw, coping saw, razor saw.

2. Planes: block plane,small hand plane, spokeshave.

3. Scraper blades.

4.Clamps: wooden klempsia cam type, metal long reach ‘g’ clamps, camping pegs.

5. Knives: a selection of hobby knives.

6. Drill bits from 1/16″ to 1/2″, brad point type as well as the normal type.

7. Measuring rulers: 12″ long to 36″ long.

8.Machine square, Vernier caliper.

9. Swivelling vice. (Versa vice, USA)

10. Router, with specialist bits.

11. Sharpening equipment: diamond leveling stones.

Most of these tools are available from local hardware stores and hobby shops, but the specialist luthier tools are available from www.stewmac.com or www.australianluthiersupplies.com or www.guitarwoods.com

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Building a new guitar is a great way to get involved in repairing guitars. It is very difficult to make a guitar from start to finish without making a few slip-ups. For instance, if you are making a neck with a dovtail join to the body, then you will be able to see all the ways of varying the neck alignment. When a guitar comes in to be repaired, you will have prior knowledge of the dovetail join and where exactly you can insert steam nozzles to work the joint loose.Once the neck is separated from the body, you will know where to remove wood to improve the neck angle. Sometimes one can go too far in removing wood and you have to glue on small shims and resize the fit. Wood removal can also go too far when shaping the neck, and the final profile is not what was first intended. While the neck is not necessarily ruined, one gets to appreciate the many neck profiles arrived at by being too gung-ho.

Using a router around the edge of the guitar top or back can cause chipouts, probably because of going against the grain. They can often be repaired, and by doing so, gets you ready for all the damaged guitars that will come by your shop. You will learn to colour match various pieces of wood and you will have in your wood collection, lots of scraps that you can browse through. I keep lots of small offcuts of spruce, cedar, ebony, rosewood etc. Bridge saddle slots often need to be filled in, in preparation for a new slot to be cut just next to it, so I keep the offcuts from edge binding and use them to fill the slot.

Before a new guitar is lacquered, the whole guitar is thoroughly sanded, and this is where little imperfections show up, like pinholes and small gaps between the binding and the top or back. Special wood fillers can be used to plug these gaps, keeping the colour the same as the surrounding wood.After the lacquering is done, occassionally the new guitar has an altercation with the doorway, so there is now a dent in the edge lacquer. Now you have a chance to do the repair and because you’ve done a great job of it, you will easily be able to tackle a lot of the damaged guitars that come your way.