Tas. Blackwood/ebony

Because I am an avid pedal steel player, make lots of solidbody electric lapsteels and resonator guitars,listen to mainly instrumental music, with real musicians, then, occassionally I get to make an acoustic lapsteel. These guitars just ooze sweet tone, and until you stop and listen to one, you won’t know what you’ve been missing. My pic here does not do the wood justice. It is the most extraordinary figured wood. Tasmanian blackwood has the ability to turn heads, and make you have that second look. Except I can stare at it all day long. The tuning that I chose was dgdgbd, from thick to thin. Gauge was 13-61. There is an L.R. Baggs element under the saddle, with a volume wheel at the soundhole. Battery replacement is through the soundhole.

Soundhole ring

There seems to be a little too much glue spread around here, but a couple of passes through the drum sander with 240 grit paper will level this ring nicely and remove the excess glue.I just love the wavy figure on this redwood top. It is time to cut out the soundhole with the circle cutter. I can use a hand held circle cutter, or the dremel tool with the router bit doing the cutting, or the circle cutter held in the vertical drill press. The latter is by far the quickest way, but a little daunting. Once the cutout is complete, hand sand the edges of the hole smooth. Cut out the bridge reinforcement plate and thickness to 3mm, draw the cross braces onto the underside of the top, position the bridge plate over the location of the saddle and bridge pins, glue the plate down to the top with the rods of the go-bar deck. The floor of the deck has a 28′ radius scouped into it. Leave to dry for several hours.

Gluing the centreseam brace

Once the back has been thicknessed, the spruce centreseam, salvaged from offcuts from the soundboard, are glued inline down the centre of the back. The locations of the back cross braces will be marked later on, and small sections are chiselled out to take the braces.Try to precut the spruce so it ends at the tail block and neck block.

Gluing done on the bridge patch

Gluing the bridge reinforcement patch

Bandsawing out the shape

The neck has been drawn on this form as well, so now we can see the whole length of the guitar. It is only 34″ long. As this is only a 4 string guitar, I am not utilizing an adjustable truss rod. I will use ebony as a stiffener up the middle. There will be no dovetail joint, but a biscuit joint will join the neck to the body. This is the way I join my ukelele necks to their bodies. This is really an oversized baritone uke.

The first step to get this instrument started was to select the top wood, back and side wood, neck wood, fingerboard wood, bridge wood and edge binding. I have bandsawn the thick redwood topwood into thinner pieces, drum sanded them to the same thickness (oversize), edge sanded the 2 gluing edges, glued and clamped them in the floor clamps. Leave to dry overnight, and it will be ready to sand to thickness.

Bandsawing the body shape

Blank joined pieces of hoop pine

                    During the last post, I talked about drawing acoustic guitar shapes.That involved freehand drawing of graceful curves.There is not too much measuring required, namely the lower bout, waist and upper bout. Check out the latest electric guitar shape that I drew from looking at a small picture. It won’t be an exact copy, but it is near enough to look the part. If you learn to make a guitar (electric), you will need to do lots of measuring to get the proportions right. This electric guitar project needed lots of straight line drawing and several opposite edges were either in line or parallel to each other. The key to getting the proportions right was to decide the scale length (string length) of the guitar, and all other measurements of the body had to relate to the fret spacings.

A lap steel guitar is generally electric. It is a solid body electric guitar, which sits on your lap. There are no frets on the guitar, only fret markers, which tell you where to place the steel bar that slides up and down using your left hand. Your right hand is used to finger pick the strings.

A resonator guitar has an aluminum resonator cone in the body and the instrument sits on your lap, much like the lap steel guitar. It is usually a square-necked instrument, but can also be found with a round neck. It is played similarly to a normal guitar but the resonator cone is what gives it a particular sound. It is often referred to as a Dobro guitar, based on the Dopyera brothers of California, who invented the style of the instrument.

A mandolin is known as an f-style arch top instrument. They are small and have “f” holes in the body. It is s high-pitched, sweet-sounding instrument that has eight strings. The mandolin requires a lot of carving as it has a carved top, carved back, and a scroll on the body. The mandolin is typically used in bluegrass music.

Wooden banjos are all wood in both the body and the neck and usually have a skin on it with metal parts surrounding it. They utilize nylon strings that can be surprisingly loud. Wooden banjos are usually used as practice instruments in place of a real banjo but are also used in little acoustic bands.

Making a guitar is different each time and there are different steps and requirements to follow for each different guitar type.