parlour

000 size

dreadnaught

When you learn to make a guitar, you want it to sound good, and you want the shape of it to look good.Guitars of all shapes and colours have been used as a tool to attract attention for some time now. If there is a shape out there that you like, then copy it onto paper or cardboard or plywood. If you would rather have a go at drawing your own shape, then get some drawing paper (newsagents), and begin by drawing a body centerline.The length of this line will basically determine the size of the instrument. You need to mark the upper bout width, waist width, and lower bout width. The parlour guitar is the smallest shown here (photos are not quite to scale), and the dreadnaught is the largest. Once you start drawing freehand, you will soon see how tricky this process is. I was a draftsman for many years, but all my straightline drawing didn’t help much here. You need to draw fluent, elloquent lines.The jumbo guitar size is not shown here, because of the size of the wood needed to make such a guitar. You only need to draw one half of the body, because when you make the wood body template, it is flipped over on its edge to the reverse side to make an identical half.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 at 10:05 pm and is filed under making a guitar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.