Did you know you can subscribe to free email or RSS alerts of new articles?

One of the challenges in being new to guitar building is developing an understanding of basic woodworking and finishing techniques. While guitar building books will tell you what tool to use, they typically don’t tell you how to use it. If you don’t have that knowledge or understanding you’re out of luck.

Being a newcomer to woodworking, I thought I’d list a few of the resources I have found helpful in developing enough of an understanding to undertake this project.

There are two books I find incredibly helpful. They are as follows:

• Woodworking With the Router by Bill Hylton – if you only purchase one book about routers and router techniques, this is the one. Everything you absolutely must know is in here. The book is well written - detailed yet concise. Plenty of color photographs help bring the material home. Note: The original edition contains only black and white photos which aren’t as good at communicating information. Get the new one. Besides the color photographs, content has been expanded and improved.
• Understanding Wood Finishing: How to Select and Apply the Right Finish by Bob Flexner – Like Woodworking With the Router, this is another “bible” regarding its subject matter. If you’ve looked around the web, talked to people about finishing techniques or explored the sites of finish product manufacturers, you’ve probably come across a great deal of voodoo about the subject. Bob Flexner gets you past all the nonsense and old wives’ tales. Here is detailed information on the various categories of finishing products, information on how to apply them as well as information on troubleshooting and correcting problems. Buy it. Buy it now.

Apart from these two books, tool catalogs are a great resource. I particularly like the Lee Valley catalog. However, it is rather specialized so you shouldn’t forget more common sources such as Sears. Flipping through these you begin to develop a better understanding of what’s out there to help you accomplish a given task. Flip through these with a critical eye though.

It’s tempting to buy every tool and device that suggests that it is the best tool for the job or will shave time off your project. Think about what you have and how it might be repurposed. For example, a bandsaw may be an ideal tool for cutting out a guitar body but a jigsaw, a much more common tool in the small workshop, will do the job as well. Do a rough cut with the jigsaw, follow it up with a rasp to take away some additional material and you’re ready to proceed with the router.

Another wonderful yet underutilized resource is the public library system. What your local library doesn’t have on its shelves may very well be available through a lending network. Oftentimes, you can obtain books from other libraries simply by requesting them through your local library or through an online system. I took advantage of this and tracked down all sorts of books on woodworking – from the very general to the very specific. I went online, performed my searches, made my requests and picked up books from my local library often within a day or two of my request. Go look into this resource.

Published Aug 31st, 2006 | Topic: Guitar Building Resources | 3 Comments →

The guitar virtuoso Adrian Legg plays a great example of a custom guitar made with ergonomics in mind. Built by Bill Puplett, a guitar builder out of England, the guitar bares a striking resemblance to the Klein Electric guitar.

Among the key ergonomic features are the sweeping upper bout which provides plenty of picking hand support and a lower bout shape that helps set the guitar neck at an angle when seated. In addition, the guitar is chambered, which apart from its contribution to the guitar’s tone, reduces its weight as well. Further details about the guitar are available from the Tech Tidbits section of Adrian Legg’s site as well as the Guitar Player article Streaming Vertical Slices – A Lesson with Adrian Legg in Fast, Fluid Fingerpicking.

From a guitar maker’s perspective, this design has a significant advantage over the Klein like guitar I am attempting to build - the use of a conventional neck and bridge. Because headless guitars are far less popular, components such as bridges, necks and head pieces can be difficult to find. When found, they are often significantly more expensive than those available for conventional guitars. Using a conventional neck, bridge and tuners, leads to greater choices and potentially lower costs. For the would be luthier, these are important considerations.

To see the guitar in action, take a look at this video of Adrian Legg. In addition, Adrian Legg plays this guitar on this clip from his Homespun Tapes instructional video.

Published Aug 29th, 2006 | Topic: Electric Guitar | 10 Comments →

In Important Elements For An Ergonomic Guitar, I list weight as one of several important design considerations in an ergonomic guitar. Weight reduction can be accomplished in a number of ways including such methods as the use of lightweight woods (or other materials) or chambering the guitar. Here is another possible approach as seen in Kevin Chilcott’s Royal Electra Custom Guitar:

It’s a simple approach easily implemented with a few hole saws. (CORRECTION 09.01.2006 - Please see the 09.01.2006 update below for Kev Chilcott’s clarification on just how difficult this actually was to accomplish.) Aesthetic considerations aside, this approach to weight reduction fits well with other stated design goals of an ergonomic guitar such as picking arm support and balance. A chambered body, of course, accomplishes the same goal in a subtle way. Nonetheless, it’s a straightforward option.

UPDATE 09.01.2006 - Kev Chilcott kindly contacted me to provide additional background on his Royal Electra Custom guitar design. As he indicates, the design was done for aesthetics rather than ergonomics. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise - I thought it was an interesting design element that could be used in pursuit of reducing a guitar’s weight. However, I failed to realize the amount of effort that went into execution. Kev Chilcott explains further:

“Special jigs had to be made for a heavy duty router and the hole sizes were critical to the design.
I should also point out that the finishing inside the holes was far from simple right through the sanding stages, spraying and to the final polishing of the lacquer, which is as good as on the faces of the guitar. The whole concept was, and is, very time consuming indeed.”

Kev Chilcott then goes on to share some additional and very interesting details regarding his work:

“The main ergonomic feature of the guitar is the ’stepped’ heel joint, which I designed in 1986 and also the 5 way switch through the body without using a scratch plate which I also designed, by the way, in 1986 - this feature was seen in magazine reviews and guitar shows in that and the following year and is now used by just about every other guitar manufacturer on the planet.

It’s funny how things creep into the mass production process without many people realizing where it’s come from!

I have also used the “thin guitar concept” which in my case is more about the particular wood used, usually a heavier variety with a nice grain structure, and thinning it to a weight that is more acceptable.”

I thank Kev Chilcott for taking the time to clarify these points and provide me with additional information. Its always great to have the input of a professional luthier! Thank you again!

Published Aug 28th, 2006 | Topic: Ergonomic Guitar Design | 8 Comments →

As noted in Time for a New Guitar Template, there were some concerns with my first attempt at an electric guitar template. It was a good first attempt but time combined with an improved understanding of woodworking (I’m new to this), has given me a more critical eye. I’m glad I made this second attempt. This guitar template is much closer to the original plan, its sanded edges more square and the curves more fair. Unfortunately, the image doesn’t do it justice.

When I undertook this guitar project earlier this year, one of the things I spent a great deal of time on was tracking down how to make a template. It took a combination of searching and asking questions on the Project Guitar forum to get a sense of where to start. Given that, I thought it would be helpful to other newcomers to document a bit of the process. Hopefully, it will prove useful to someone.

The first thing, of course, was obtaining some sort of guitar plan. With some of the more popular guitars (such as the Les Paul and the Stratocaster), plans in AutoCAD format (DWG and DXF files) are commonly available. Guitar plans are sometimes available in other formats as well such as Adobe Acrobat (PDF files). You may even be able to purchase templates from an outfit like GuitarBuildingTemplates.com. Others exist as well.

In cases where none exist, some have taken an image, determined a known distance on the guitar such as a neck width, scale length, or bridge dimension and used that to scale up the image to the appropriate size.

In my case, I was fortunate enough to find that Steve Klein, the designer of the Klein Electric Guitar, had published a plan available from The Guild of American Luthiers so I started there.

A more recent alternative is provided by Eric Olds who drew up Klein based guitar plans and made them publicly available through BTEG. See Eric Olds Klein Electric Guitar Project - Part 1 and Eric Olds Klein Electric Guitar Project - Part 2 for the plans.

The second thing I had to determine was a means of transferring the plan drawing onto the template material. I came across a number of ideas including tracing the image onto the drawing. This particular idea called for scribbling all over the back of the drawing in ink and using that to transfer an impression onto the template material by tracing over the lines of the drawing. That seemed unnecessarily sloppy and introduced the first opportunity to deviate from the actual plan – hand tracing the pattern. Instead, the idea that seemed most straightforward was to simply glue the plan to the template material so that’s what I did. I obtained a container of spray adhesive, sprayed it all over the template material and carefully laid down the plan onto it working slowly from one edge to the other to avoid wrinkles.

Third, I had to determine what sort of template material to use. Templates are made from a variety of materials including plywood, acrylic and MDF. After reading about them, I chose MDF because I felt it was the easiest for the inexperienced. Here are some of its advantages:

• MDF is completely uniform with no grain to worry about and no knots in the material to throw you.
• MDF cuts easily. A jigsaw run at low speeds makes clean cuts and is easy to control.
• MDF files and sands easily resulting in a smooth edge with a relatively small effort.

The next steps involved actually cutting out and shaping the guitar template.

First, I clamped down the template at the edge of a table using Irwin Quick Clamps which I HIGHLY recommend. These are easily removed and put back in a new position in just a few seconds. How you clamp, is also important. Don’t let too much of the template overhang the table otherwise the flexible material will move up and down as you try to work with it. Expose only a portion of the template at a time and rotate it often to give yourself the best angle at working a particular edge.

Second, I used a jigsaw to rough cut the template. Jigsaws have two modes of operation – an orbital action (sort of the “default”) and a straight up and down action. You WANT the straight up and down action. The orbital motion will cut a wider path, so to speak, and you are trying to do careful work. Turn it off. Next keep in mind that the jigsaw blade is VERY flexible. You want to focus on keeping the jigsaw perpendicular to the surface of the work in hand so that you keep the edge relatively square to the top of the template. When cutting curves, it’s important to take it slowly so that you don’t bend the blade. It’s better to make several shorter cuts than to try to follow a curve from beginning to end. The likelihood is that you will either throw your cut completely off square or you will gouge out a chunk and have to start again. All that said I came to about 1/8” of the lines on the plan. Those who are better skilled can certainly strive for closer which makes the subsequent filing and sanding easier.

Third, I used a 4-in-1 file to remove material and approach the lines on the drawing. I started with its rougher surfaces to take off more material and switched to its finer surfaces as I got closer to the lines of the drawing. I used relatively short strokes to avoid gouging the MDF and to help me keep the tool parallel to the surface of the template for a square edge.

Fourth, I used 80 grit sandpaper to finish once I had gotten very close to the lines on the plan – say about 1/16”.

All the while, it’s important to never lose sight of the lines on the drawing which means two things. First, you have to keep getting rid of the sanding dust. Second, I used a sanding block with high grit paper to keep the drawing’s edges clean. As I filed and sanded the edges, the paper would become a bit furry which would make it difficult to see the lines. I stopped periodically to clean up the lines with a few light flicks of the sanding block being careful just to clean up the edge and not take off the lines.

One other thing I found useful in determining the fairness of the template’s curves was simply turning it over and inspecting it from the back. This let my eye focus on the fairness of the curves rather than the drawing which I felt might give me a false impression. In my case, it turned out to be useful in cleaning up a surface or two.

In the end, it took me approximately 2.5 hours to complete the second template vs. the 1 hour it took me for the first attempt. I am so much happier with the overall results that I’m glad I spent the time on it.

Published Aug 22nd, 2006 | Topic: Guitar Build #1 | 28 Comments →