When making a guitar whether you are making a standard guitar or a custom guitar, there are many considerations to make. Generally, you have to stick to the shapes that are always used. The ways you can deviate from the norm with a handmade guitar is by using more exotic woods and a different range of color not usually seen on guitars you find in a store.

The size and shapes of the guitars will affect their sound. Larger, gloomier sounds will come from a bigger guitar. Smaller-bodies produce sounds that are not as loud. Besides the shape of the guitars, one of the biggest tasks involved in guitar-making is researching and learning the qualities of different woods. I personally use spruce wood for the sound boards. Other popular choices for the sound board are the western red cedar and the red wood from America. Australian wood called hoop pine and the King William pine that comes from Tasmania. Obtaining the wood for your guitar making project can be fairly expensive. Depending on the quality and type of wood used, you can spend around $15 to $100 buying a top.

The tools required to make a guitar are few. Basically, you could make one on your own kitchen table. But a list of general tools needed is as follows: good hand saws, good hand planes, a couple of good, sharpened chisels, little saws to cut fret slots, a miter box to hold your saw and saw the frets, and a band saw. An electric band saw helps to cut the larger pieces of wood and should run a continuous blade saw around two wheels. A router is also essential for cutting the little ledge around the edge of the instrument where you fit the plastic or wood binding.

In addition to the physical supplies needed to make guitars, you also need to have a commitment to doing the work. The process is not week-long. It takes time to do the steps correctly and in the appropriate order. You need to be comfortable and able to work with your hands. Patience is also necessary when making a guitar if you plan to see the project through to the end.

As a professional guitar maker of many years, I credit my early education for teaching me many things that I would love to pass on to others wanting to learn to make a guitar. In the start of my career, there were not any good books out that covered the craft of making a guitar. I was getting interested in learning how to repair an old guitar I had found. I was going through a magazine and found an ad for the Earthworks Guitar School in America. It was started by Charles Fox and based in the state of Vermont and the school is still going strong today, with a second location in California. I decided to go through the two month course and ended the class having made a nice steel string guitar.

First and foremost, the school was a disciplined environment. Everyone in the class had to always be at the same point in the process. If it meant staying up until 3 o’clock in the morning to finish, then that is what you had to do. Another aspect of the discipline that is a key to making guitars is the importance of doing the process in a certain order. Steps cannot be completed haphazardly. In order for all of the individual parts to fit together, everything must be worked on in an orderly fashion. Going through the Earthworks Guitar Making School has also given me insight into the art of teaching other people how to make guitars.

The school also taught me the importance of techniques of the craft of making a custom guitar. Most importantly, I think I find one lesson as the most important and I couldn’t have learned it anywhere else. I believe what I learned about preparing the wood before applying lacquer is one of the most valuable things I took away from the school besides the discipline. I also learned that in order to be good at guitar making, you need to possess patience.

Today, there is a larger selection of how-to books on hand making guitars but they still may not be as valuable as a hands-on, taught course like at Earthworks.

I look forward to passing on the things I learnt at Earthworks to others wanting to learn to make a guitar.

People may not be aware that there are more than two guitar types (acoustic and electric) that can be created but there are many different types of guitars. There are some very large differences in each and the following is an overview of the types of custom guitars that I regularly make for customers and can teach you to make. This list is not all-inclusive but it will give you an guide to the different projects I undertake hand making guitars.

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.

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