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It's very troublesome when the piece of wood you glued your fingers to is the workbench!

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Waddy

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Sound Clips of most of my guitars

That's a masterful understatement, Waddy. Reading all these honest responses has actually made me feel a lot better about my own mistakes. I've made more than I can count, but so far I've stayed lucky and have been able to fix them without a complete re-do of any component.
No....wait...there was that tailpiece I made that caused the ball ends of the strings to push down into the top wood. That was pretty bad.....

I hung my second guitar from the ceiling to spray the finish like I had seen in a Gibson shop tour video. I sprayed the first coat of lacquer and then went for a walk while it dried. When I came back an hour later, the guitar body was lying on the concrete floor. Never, never, never use TWINE to hang anything!!!!! Luckily it suffered only minor damage.

Chuck

I just had to add this to this tread: Started building an electric back in Nov. and have worked on it here and there between other projects. I built it for a 25in scale. So I spent the last few days doing the final steps to string it up and finally strung it up last night. I was setting the intonation on the low E and when I would fret the 12th fret I would get a "F" note. Can you guess what I had done?? OK....I'll tell ya.....I had mistakenly used the wrong scale length "660mm" (had the stew mac rule flipped over to wrong scale). I'm not that new to building electrics ( my 7th one)....so this was just a big screw up!!
I used Elmers "white" to glue the fretboard on and will try removing it and making a new fretboard sometime.
Any advice you could give would be appreciated as I have never removed one before!!

Go ahead and laugh now....I did, amoung calling myself some "choice" words!

Jeff

Fret boards are not so hard to remove cleanly. I use an old clothing iron and a few putty knives.

Just set the iron, or whatever your heat source is on one end of the board, let it warm up for a little while and start slipping your blades into the glue joint, a corner is an easy place to start. You will know when the glue is releasing, so dont push it if there is resistance, the knife should slide right through the glue joint. Just move the iron up the neck as you go, being careful that the knife does not start diving into the wood. For most of the process, i like a long knife that i can grab with both hands as it sticks out from either side, i gently wiggle it back and forth as it slowly makes its way towards the nut.

I find that even on instruments with horribly thick finishes, if the wood the right temperature, there is not any noticable finish damage to the neck. As a guage of things, constantly keep feeling the back of the neck with your hand, if it feels just a little warm under the iron you are in good shape, the glue is probably ready to let go and you wont hurt anything. If it gets too hot at the back of your neck, especially if your neck is made of laminations of wood, the heat will loosen those joints too.

You have a little advantage because you will be making a new board, so you dont have to worry about warping or otherwise trashing the board coming off, although you should try to save it.

If there is any inlay material in the fretboard and you want to save it, mask it very well. I use a sandwick of several layers of masking tape with aluminum foil in the middle.

Of course mask off anything anywhere near the iron, good luck.

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Jordan Aceto
Ithaca, NY

Built my first guitar.

Then, of course, had to build another.

And another, and another...

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Expectation is the source of all misery; comparison the thief of joy.
http://redrivercanoe.ca/

Funny thing is that it, probably, is more expensive than drugs!

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Freddy Prince used to say that it was no secret that he was hooked on cocaine but that with help he got off that crap and took up golf instead. He went on to say that if anyone thinks that golf is cheaper than cocaine they are in for a rude awakening.......

I think that the same is true of guitar building but at least we have something to show for it.

WOW - I am surprised that this thread just keeps going...... I guess we are all great at making dumb mistakes - I know that I am.....

By the way about the mistake with the scale length... I don't calculate bridge position, I wait until the final moment (with the neck on and stuff) then measure nut to 12th then 12th to bridge (add whatever needed for compensation... but I just go 12th to saddle with electrics because usually they have a wide range of adjustment... unless it's TOM bridge). If you're deciding where to route for cavities for tremolo then just get the fretboard you have and find where the neck is gonna go and measure from there...

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

I just glued up a top with uneven sides, so I could not get good pressure on it (using the 'Kinkead' method of puptenting it.) So I 'puptented' it about an inch off the board. When it dried, the HHG seemed to shrink a bit, and the top is angled a bit, and has soft cracking sounds when I flex it (starved joint)

Not a 'dumb' mistake, more of a learning curve, use less pressure thing, but reading OLF I learned about starved glue joints, and I think thats the main problem.

Second glue up on this top BTW...

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Here is what a Parlor Guitar is for!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEa8PkjO6_I

Mistakes just keep coming ...

If you are cutting up a set of bindings, and you want to laminate a few purfling lines to the binding bottoms before bending, do the laminations
to the whole strip that is cut to height before ripping the individual binding strips to width.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

This is a short story about a lesson my Uncle taught me when I was about 12 years old. I was talking to my Uncle while he was working in his garage. He was building something or another and was talking to me at the same time. His point was to give a life lesson in regards to adults. My Uncle went on to tell me that adults sometimes appear to know everything but that you must always think for yourself and evaluate what is said. I believe his intention was to aid me and my relationship with my father. Of course all that was said were generalities and not directed to myself of my father. There was one aspect of this conversation that I have always remembered and still repeat his story to all my nieces and nephews. While my Uncle was talking to me he was using electric drill and proceeded to drill through his piece of wood and through the chair (from the kitchen) that was supporting the wood. He just shook his head and said that in a manner of speaking he just proved his point.

Philip

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aka konacat

If you think my playing is bad you should hear me sing!
Practice breeds confidence and confidence breeds competence. Unfortunately, I'm stuck in practice.

early on I made a saddle with the B string wiggle.

I just made one that looked like it was right as I hadn't learned the RIGHT way to do it......

sadly the B string wiggle went the WRONG WAY.......

AH well, I have a lefty saddle now should I need one.......

there have been many other mistakes, some were "dealt with" some became fire wood.

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My soundclick xx luthier blog xx luthier soundclick

The dumbest mistake I ever made was offering to help a friend with her plumbing.I am not a plumber, but had done some work on my own house and figured I could help her out.She lived on the 30th floor of a high rise condo,and after I replaced the faucet in her shower tub and got the super to turn the water back on,I noticed I had installed the hot-cold cartridge in backwards.No need to call the the super to turn off the water, I'll just pull it out and reverse it.If any of you know the kind of water pressures needed in high rises you will understand what happened next.The pressure blew out the cartridge,blew out all the tiles on the opposite shower wall, scalded both of my hands with second degree burns,and by the time I was able to find one of the shutoff valves in the hallway, flooded both her condo and the one below!!

Not finish sanding the wood enough before applying finish....

Sanding cross grain with 80-grit.

Deciding to thin the top a wee bit after closing the box..... With a plane... and popping out a giant chunk.

Not letting shellac dry enough.... before setting a Wool coat on top of it.

Spraying Shellac under an Oak tree on a windy day....

Not drilling a neck insert bolt deep enough.... and forcing the neck insert in...... splitting out a 1" chunk of neck.

Sitting the body on a weathered home made plywood picnic table while finishing the top.... leading to gouges all over the back...

I will probably think of a couple more.

John

I managed to glue braces upside down on the back of a guitar...made the back concave rather than domed . It took time to fix, but it was well worth it!

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Jake

~Make a joyful noise unto the Lord~

I glued the fingerboard on. Then saw the truss rod sitting on the workbench.

Dave

The Oakie Pine-oakie Hendrix chambered carve top lap Strat steel was goin' great, I had just finished carving the Southern white pine top to for the oak body, went to put it on and realized I had matched the body instead of carving it's complement. Doh*#^^%$#

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"It's a Tone Faerie thing"
"Da goal is to sharpen ur wit as well as ye Sgian Dubh"
"Sippin Loch Dhu @Black lake" ,Kirby O...

Trying out new slotting techniques on necks with completed V-joints.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Carved into a stupidly placed neck CF reinforcement strip. Was quite easily fixed (dremel the corner out, inlay a wedge of scrap neck wood, level, invisible. Personal guitar). 2 days later....did it again. Mostly because both guitars were experiments with slimmer necks than I usually build, and the rod positioning was what I use as 'default'. Going to be splaying them a little less in future....

I feel so much better tonight reading these posts. I think I have made nearly all of the mistakes listed here over the past several years. Ok here is one no-one has mentioned. Was spraying a body in my garage and hooked the guitar to the overhead door track with a rope. Did a beautiful spray job with lacquer and then left the garage and decided to close the overhead door - sooooo, hit the switch and the door started coming down carrying the body with it. That one sits on my wall of shame. Busted up beyond repair.

Oh yeah, another - attaching bindings to a beautiful 000 with indian rosewood and adirondack top. Tried a new approach wicking CA into the bindings. If a little is good, alot is better right? So I wicked and wicked and wicked, not realizing the CA was flowing inside and all over the sides and top. Ok, then decided to remove the back to clean up all the CA, and upon trying to remove, screwed up the back - that guitar is now an expensive wall hanger in my office - think I'll put a clock in the soundhole some day !!!!

I have made too many stupid mistakes to list - but I have learned a number of good, and expensive lessons, the biggest being to slow down - patience not my virtue.

The dumbest mistake? I really don't think I have one. No really!

They've all been pretty dumb, and no way is there enough room on this server's HD to list them all. The server hosting the OLF would crash and have to take a couple of aspirin, have a cup of tea, and a bit of a lay down.

Screw up - either fix it or just move on.

It's all in the recovery.

Built a solid body Les Paul knock off but did it out of a solid piece of curly maple I picked up cheap. Because there was no laminate top I had to drill a hole for the wiring diagonally from the jack cavity all the way through the pickup cavities and into the cavity for the pickup selector switch. Waited to do this until the entire guitar was carved.

Bought a 24 inch wood auger and started carefully drilling. I had two people help me keep the bit level. Made it through the pickup cavities and thought I was home free. Only had a short burst to get into the selector cavity when the bit bent upwards (yes upwards) and came out through the guitar top while we all watched speechless. We just dropped everything and let it sit where it was for about two weeks. Have you ever inlayed a patch on a carved/curved surface? It wasn't easy. You can see the weird ebony design around the selector switch in the attached photo covering the mistake.

By the way- I also used black cyano to set the inlay and watched helplessly while it wicked into the maple. Oh, and also by the way, don't spray accelerator on wet cyano when setting binding. It likes to foam up and turn white. Doesn't look good against the ebony. Better stop now. I could go on for days.

I was making two mandolins at once and I had to trim the excess from the top of a slotted fret board. After I did that, I did the same thing to the other fretboard. It was only after I was done cutting did I realize that I grabbed the original board and had lopped off the first fret.

I've done just about every mistake you can make including taking up building in the first place. I've dropped instruments while spraying finish, carved through to the truss rod on a neck, drilled the holes in my heel block for the bolts and discovered that I forgot to take the thickness of the top into account. Ah, the list goes on and on.

The most recent mistake was to get too busy to even enter the shop for close to six months. I went to pack up a mandolin to send to Joe White and noticed a center seam crack. I checked the RH and it was 19%. That's a bit low even when you glue up your instrument in the high 30s. My dehumidifer has a drain and can run continuously. My humidifier has to be filled regularly. It's currently a solid block of lime crud and I have to buy another.

Mike, can you provide more information on your humifidier? How did you pipe it into water so you didnt have ti fill>???? Thanks