We have been talking about acoustic guitar shapes and the variety there is. Now I am about to embark on drawing yet another guitar shape-that of a 4 string tenor .I have nothing to copy from this time, so I used my smallest parlour  guitar template, drew an outline from it and then downsized from there. I knew the body length I need from the customer, and he actually stood and watched while I drew the new outline. The scale length is 21″, 14 frets to the body. The sound hole size is going to be a full 4″, so that a standard size soundhole pickup can be used for amplification.

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.

3/4 inch plywood workboard

hand circle cutter

Dremel router with circle cutting attachment

2 routers and a hand purfling cutter

 This acoustic guitar is going to be made on a plywood workboard with adjustable dowel posts. Any size guitar can be made on this board. The guitar is made upside down. The rosette is inlaid into the top first, the soundhole is then cut out, then the top is turned over and is placed facedown on the workboard.The braces and bridge plate are glued on, then the tailblock and neckblock, then the sides are attached with the kerfing, then the back goes on last. The neck block will have a tenon joint, and this will be bolted to the neck. Special bolts are available from Bunnings hardware, or Stewmac.com. I normally do a dovetail joint, but it requires special jigs and bits. A bolt-on neck is more manageable for a beginner. The hand circle cutter is available from Stewmac, but you have to assemble it yourself. I used mine for at least 25years. It is a great tool. If you can’t get a router, then there is the hand purfling cutter, but be warned, it is very hard going. Of course, you can make your guitar without any binding at all, and it will still look attractive (Takamine comes to mind).

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.

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.

                          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

<a href=”http://technorati.com/claim/x67dnh772a” rel=”me”>Technorati Profile</a>

<a href=”http://technorati.com/faves?sub=addfavbtn&amp;add=http://learntomakeaguitar.com”><img src=”http://static.technorati.com/pix/fave/btn-fave2.png” alt=”Add to Technorati Favorites” /></a>