Official Luthiers Forum!

Did you take it out in public?

What were your specific challenges?

Obviously, you learned a ton. What sticks out? In other words, what technique/etc. has carried with you through time.

FTR, I'm on my first. Yep, that's right. Clueless, but learning.

If everything goes well, I'm thicknessing and bending the BW sides today. I have a long-time builder and friend that is only a phone call away.

In case anyone was wondering, the friend is Jerry from Evergreen Mtn Instruments http://www.eoni.com/~emi/. Great guy with a ton of knowledge.

This forum is fantastic. Thanks in advance for your replies.

Arnie the Sponge

My first adventure into building was a few years ago. Living in the North...like north of 60 North...and desperately wanting a good quality acoustic. The local shops - there were two, had mostly mid level instruments and anything of quality (Martin, Taylor and Gibson) had to be special ordered in, sight unseen. Having always been a bit of woodworker, I thought why not try and build one. I had read all I could, but had no idea what I was getting myself into.

I ordered a 000 kit from Martin and jumped in with both feet. Had to mail order some hand tools and find as much information online as possible. Having no workshop, I used the top of the chest freezer in my rec room as a bench / building area. Needless to say I learned a lot. The biggest things I took out of it are:

1) Take my time...a little time on the front end saved a ton of time later.
2) Cut the binding channels as close to the proper depth as possible - too much scraping to make them flush left them uneven.
3) Use the right tools for the job.
4) Finishing is just as long a process as the build.
5) Knowing about the OLF at the time would have been nice.

Mainly though, I learned that I love building instruments and that first sound you get when it's strung up will always make me smile. In fact, when I left the North, I picked where to live next based on where I could learn lots about building.

For the record, it played in tune and in pitch. The action was a bit high, but I've since reset the neck and re finished it properly. It's a little rough in some spots, but only I really see them because I know where the mistakes are.

Now if I could just find a tool to slow time down so I'd be able to devote more to building!!!

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Jamie M

A Martin 12 String Kit. Never finished it, couldn't get the neck angle right to save my life. LOL. I think I actually burned it in my fireplace.

What I learned was I'll never really be a builder.

That's when I started making Dulcimers. No neck angles. Just file the nut and saddle or use a zero fret and you are done!

See my build albums, below. First took just over a year.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Well, I won't play in public (I'm hopeless)
But I certainly wasn't ashamed of the guitar. Standards were a lot lower back in the 70s
A professional classical teacher 'made my day' by playing it at a party at our place- he said kind words about it.
One of my nephews owns it now, and it's still 'going strong', as I hear.
It was a classical guitar built with 'basic' woods (cedar top, mahog b+s, brazRW bridge, binding and fb (!)). I bought a 'kit' (box of materials-rough lumber+bindings, tuners) from Lewis Luthier supply- later to become LMI and LMII..
Built it with all hand tools + Dremel. I was taking a night school machine shop course, so could make the Dremel jigs there.
And the hand tools were 'basic'-Stanley plastic handled chisels, block plane, etc. The best stone I had was a 'fine india' - Arkansas came later.
I laid out the fingerboard slots with a scale and hand cut them with a saw (this was from Lewis') and a wooden angle guide, since the FB was already tapered.

Binding ledge was a problem-not that it was slow with the Dremel, but I just didn't make it uniform enough and deep enough, so the binding ended up a little 'thin' in spots. This is still a challenge for me- so it's the craftsman,not the tools.


Lessons:
It's nice to have all those great tools, but you can 'make do' with alternatives and home-built stuff. Just get goin'! (That first build took a couple of months of evenings and weekends.)
You will make mistakes - try to prevent them, if that fails fix them or make a new part, and if that fails just 'push on'- most people won't notice.
Give away your guitars or make them for materials cost for friends- until (after 10 or 20?) people start insisting that you should be paid for your work. Are you really ready to 'warranty' those first efforts?

Cheers
John

I walked my first one around to get some feedback, didn't work, most people are too nice to tell you what they really think. Five years and 20+ instruments later I hide it in the garage 'cause its still got my name on it. Been thinkin about rippin' it apart and reusing most of the parts. It is still good quality materials ( LMII kit) and a lot of the pieces would be suitable for a truly decent guitar. Mostly the neck and the top are crude, and the fretboard and the etc, etc., etc.
Have fun! you only build your first once............. Mikey

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The Biggest Little City, Nevada
www.hammondguitars.com
I love building guitars!

My Son has the first one, plays great.
I bought a Zebra wood plank, sawed out the back and sides with a modified bow saw. bought a mahogany plank and cut out the neck with a table saw. more work than needed.
Number 1 is now two years old and shows that you should pay attention to humidity while building and keep it in a case. It has a few lumps.
Number two is a year old and I kept it next to the couch in the living room. That was ok in the summer but I can tell that the top has shrunk a little. I now store it as needed in a case.
Numer three is being finished, I think it will be okay a year or two from now. We'll see. I bought a case for it when my daughter picks it up in two weeks. I'll stick a hygrometer in the case for her.
Ditto what Jamie said, right tools cut down build time. carefully planning cuts down build time. Proper wood storage and preperation can save a hundred hours of work.
Bill

My first one??

000 Martin kit. Nice set of EIR.

I didn't really understand what ballpark the bracing and top stiffness should be in, and the resulting guitar is way too stiff.

I didn't understand how to go about setting the neck, and my string height at the saddle is way too high.

I didn't have humidity control set up and built in the very hot, humid summer. The guitar back now looks like the nearby rolling hills of SE Pennsylvania.

So, someday ...

The neck will come off for a reset.

While it's off, I'll rout off all that ugly white plastic binding and replace it with wood.

While the binding is off, I'll yank the back and either rebrace it or replace it.

While the back is off, I'll loosen up the top bracing.

Someday ...

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

In 1966 I was sixteen years old. I had a Mexican nylon string guitar, selected for me by my dad on one of his many business trips there. What I really wanted though was a steel string, ideally just like the one pictured on the latest album of my favorite group. I couldn't even find a 12 fret Martin in the stores to look at let alone afford one.
Then I found an article in Popular Science magazine by A.J. Hand entitled "You Can Build a Quality Guitar for $20.00"......I was hooked. The first thing I made was an end pin......success!(sort of...) so I proceeded to layup the rectangular wood block from which the form would be bandsawn. I didn't have one of those but my dad mentioned that my high school wood shop would have one. So, I marched in with the block and asked the shop teacher (Mr. Wustebarth) if he could cut it out for me. He looked at me like I had two heads, I had never taken a wood shop course in high school (being one of those "college bound" types) and making a guitar in 1966 was just a little , shall we say, unusual.
Anyway he kindly cut it for me and I took the pieces home and tapered the outer form and cut the inner pieces into cauls for bending the sides.
At that time H.L. Wild in NYC was one of the only places to buy guitar materials and I purchased a fretted ebony fingerboard (classical),spruce top (probably German), rosette, mahogany neck blank and a set of Brazilian Rosewood for $40.00 total (A.J.'s $20. guitar was mahogany.).
I bent the sides by boiling them in aluminum foil on my mom's stove (like a huge Jiffy Pop) and quickly transferred the hot steamng wood to the clamping forms. No one was more surprised than I that it actually worked. My dad initially discouraged me as I don't think he wanted to see me fail, but once he could see that maybe this mght work, he helped, especially with cutting things like bracing on his table saw, which I was still not allowed to use. My dad had never built a guitar himself, but had refinished several using brushng lacquer (Elmer Stromberg had once told him that a finish he had done on an old Epiphone was the best he'd ever seen by an amateur) so he was able to help with the finishing.
Anyway, the guitar was a success and I quickly built another (12 string) and was off and running.

In retrospect, though there was practically nothing available in the way of parts, tools and information back then I was also totally unhampered by any notion of what a really good guitar was and gradually improved my skills and guitar knowledge to the point of beng able to produce something credible, though it took 15 years or so.

Me with that first guitar:

David-
Thanks for the great story and picture!
Ah, 1966....
For me:
Madras shirt- check
Tan pants- check
Haircut- check
Penny loafers- check
Warm Virginia nights- check
Being sent for more beer (too young to drink) in a co-worker's Olds 4-4-2 and laying rubber at 50 mph- check
Going down to Joseph Wallo's shop in D.C. and vowing to build a guitar 'some day' (I bought his pamphlet) - check


Cheers
John

Ongoing........<smile> Learning a lot though!

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Formerly known as Adaboy.......

Dave what a great account & pic!

Me my first was overseen by Charles Fox and George Morris!
Great teachers -that made me work to their standard right of the bat !

Thanks to them for setting me in the right direction so early.

BUT -I was nervous & stayed awake nights going over & over in my head if I did all the right things they taught.
But the guitar (steel) came out great & I wish I still had it .
But needed to sell when a child was on it's way .


Mike

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Mike Collins

Dave what a great account & pic!

Me my first was overseen by Charles Fox and George Morris!
Great teachers -that made me work to their standard right of the bat !

Thanks to them for setting me in the right direction so early.

BUT -I was nervous & stayed awake nights going over & over in my head if I did all the right things they taught.
But the guitar (steel) came out great & I wish I still had it .
But needed to sell when a child was on it's way .


Mike

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Mike Collins

I started with a Martin OM cutaway kit 4 years and 7 guitars ago. I still play that 1st guitar every day and in spite of my inexperience came out real good, though each build gets better. Number 6 will get Z-poxy fill starting tomorrow and 7 is about a week or so behind. The first was a retirement present to myself and a great learning experience.

Fred

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Fred Tellier
http://www.fetellierguitars.com
Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/FE-Tellier-Guitars/163451547003866

Did someone say something about being patient at the beginning? I got the urge to build around 1996, and waited 12 years to actually do it. All that time I gathered info, asked for advice, practiced refretting junky electrics, read a few books, and mustered up the courage. When I actually did build my first, last year, I still managed to make quite a few mistakes. But I wasn't afraid to ask for help. It turned out great, and I play it a lot. But I should've started building a long time ago. You can build a good first guitar if you are patient, and don't mind re-doing things over.

Mine was a spruce and rosewood 14-fret 000 Martin kit.

It's important to know what a great guitar is, inside and out. Without knowing, it's pretty difficult to make one. I tried to gain that knowledge before I started. But much of it comes (or will come) from doing, I've found.

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"...you have to get over your strict adherence to your largely imagined notion of absolute perfection..."

It was almost 30 years ago.

I thought I knew better, of course, and broke all the rules. I had flying braces, cantilevered
this and that. and actually it was all quite stunning visually and who's to say what it would have sounded like had I not inlaid dental amalgam for the soundhole rosette. I bet that guitar weighed about 10 pounds. And it sounded just about as good ( I'm guessing now) as a box of Cherrios would if you strung it up.

One word...marathon.

My first project guitar of any kind was a warmoth strat assembled from parts. Equal parts sober and understated (rosewood board on mahogany bodied and necked strat) and insane (3 EMG pickups, individual mini switches per pickup, piezos, 3 band EQ, seperate outputs). Great fun.

First electric guitar proper was a chambered, carved top and back set neck in the PRS-ish style, which took the better part of a year to build.

First acoustic came after lurking and reading the MIMF for a long time after having digested Cumpiano. Bought EIR back/sides (pre-thicknessed) from Rivolta, along with a number of tops (including a grade III cheapie that was sacrificed to practice thinning by hand), Khaya neck, ebony board, and started building. Built a form, simple side bender, bought a blanket, and finished the guitar within about 3 or 4 months. The others haven't been quite so quick. It was a great learning experience, and less scary and confusing that I'd feared. It's a little overbuilt, a little bit heavy, I really should refret parts of it and it really really needs a new nut (as in, it still has a scrap one I put in to 'see how it sounded'), but it gets played too much for that. My excuse is that I need to finish another guitar for myself before I'm allowed to fix this one up.

My first guitar (or so I thought at the time) was nice. Cherry back & sides, Spruce top, Maple neck.
I had been here at the OLF for only a short while, and the one thing that I`ll always remember is Mario telling me that LUTHIERY IS NOT CABINETRY.
That`s when I stopped production on the guitar and started measuring.
Shortly after that, I had an amazing revelation, and knew exactly what to do next.
I solemnly placed the shavings from my just carved maple laminate neck into the soundhole and walked a gruelling 50 yards to the burning barrel.
One flick of the `ol Zippo, and sure enough, that`s just what it needed.
A Flame Finish.
I stood and watched it burn, vowing to not be so fool-hearty about my future guitars.
After that, things started making sense.
Go Figure.

Coe Franklin

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Give me 50 cents worth of regular.
Check my oil too, if you don`t mind,,,

Pics?

I'm still working on my first, but it's nearing the finish stages, which will have to wait for better weather than I'm getting here in January. But I've mounted the hardware and strung it up "in the white", as they say. It's an electric, not an acoustic. I build what I can play, and have physical problems with my arms and shoulders which prevent me from playing acoustics(even L-00 size) because of the depth of the body. The guitar has a great sound even unplugged, and nice sustain, which should improve dramatically with amplification. It plays well and in tune, and I'm quite pleased so far. If all goes well with it's completion it will be my main instrument.
I built it with a router, jigsaw, drill, handsaw, files, rasps, surform, sanding blocks and chisels. The only specialised tools I used were nut files. I'm over a year into the build, but was in no hurry. The only tool I will add in the future is a manual fret slotting set up. The only thing I bought pre-done was that radiused and slotted board. The body was cut from a cutting board(poplar) and the neck was carved from a blank I glued up from the flatsawn center leaf of an old walnut table. I ripped it into strips, flipped them on edge and laminated it so I could get a quartersawn blank.
What have I learned? The biggest thing is that most mistakes can be repaired, and sometimes you get lucky.
Also:
1- routers can take more wood than you'd like if you're not careful.
2-make the neck pocket smaller and bring it to final size with a sharp chisel(set neck).
3-a thin hardwood shim will fix a slightly oversized neck pocket
4-make sure your fretboard doesn't slip after you glue and clamp it down.
5-no matter how hard you work to get an original headstock design, after you cut it, you'll realise it looks a lot like one you've seen before. Don't sweat it.
6-hammering frets isn't that hard, as long as you're not shy about it. It's fun too!
7-and finally, though i'm sure I could add a lot more, the last thing I would say I learned is that when you feel like it's time to trash the whole thing and start over, walk away and come back a couple of days later. You can still most likely fix it. After all, it's only wood.

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Great stories.

Mine is pretty mundane. I wanted to have a decent guitar, after getting by with a Yamaki beater for 30 years or so. Wanting to own a Martin again, I started shopping, but decided that I could build one for what they cost. That turned out to be my biggest mistake, but I'm long over it.

After hovering between Martin and LMI kits, I settled on an LMI EIR OM. I bought the Cumpiano/Natelson and Kinkead books and lurked around here and MIMF, and went to work. About five months later I had a presentable guitar and proudly presented it here on the OLF with encouraging feedback. I didn't know what I didn't know, so I thought it was pretty good. I still think so, considering it was my first, but I know now that it's overbuilt and sounds like it. It plays well; I play it daily. It's good to have around for comparison with my current builds - makes the current guitars look and sound really good!

Pat

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

An OM kit from John Hall with laminated Brazilian Rosewood sides and back. My neighbor borrowed it a couple months ago. I haven't seen it since.

My first build consisted of long periods of nagging trepidation and confusion punctuated by short periods of acute, cold sweat-inducing terror.

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

My first build was a Martin D-18 mahogany kit i lost it in a house fire many many moons ago. My first scratch build was originally way to over braced RW/Koa top OM. with my trade mark Japanese. Maple leaf vine inlay. I have since thinned and scalloped the bracing some and it sound sweet, warm like a shot of 90 year old whiskey. I still play it regularly.