In my design classes I am constantly telling the students to research, research, research. So, I started my research on-line, duh doesn't everybody. I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was a ton of information on guitar building on-line. On my first Google search I came across a YouTube video titled "Guitar Building the Fast Way" uploaded by Yukon Strings. This 6 minute video was of a young man building a guitar in a small studio shop (almost looked like his bedroom.) It was compressed and sped up and it showed most of the process and of course he ended up with a nice looking instrument. Again, hope! If this young man could do this with limited tools and equipment surly so could I. After many, many, many more hours on the Internet I decided I needed a plan, literally, a set of plans to start building my first guitar. I came across some nice auto cad drawings of an OM style guitar based, I think, on a classic Gibson guitar. They looked good with good details and best of all they were free, so I downloaded them. I had officially begun. After many more hours of YouTube videos and printing out full size hard copies of my plans I decided I needed more research that I could hold in my hands. I guess I am still old school. Well, I am definitely old so I guess that makes since. I started looking for published books on the subject. Again, I was surprised that there were quite a few options. I ordered my first book from Amazon, "Step by Step Guitar Making" by Alex Willis.
It was delivered to my door step in a few days and I spent the next few days trying to absorb all the information in it. It's a great book with great color photos showing the entire process. With no luthier experience it was hard to understand some of the intricate and precise building methods used in Mr. Willis's approach to guitar building. Never the less, I began by building the Solera, the board that the body of the instrument is constructed on. At this point I also made the template for the guitar I was going to build. A full set of plans came with the book but I chose to build the guitar that I had downloaded the plans from the Internet. The book plans were for a cut away model (pictured on the cover of the book.) Although you could build it straight that cut away was a bit intimidating.
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| Solera with clamp slots and holes |
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| template mounted on .25" Masonite |
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| Solera with template in position |
The template is used through out the process to check position and reference size. It is used to trace the right side of the guitar body shape and center line on to the solera. It is then flipped to trace the left side. In addition to the solera many clamps and jigs needed to be constructed. Most of these in some form can be purchased from a luthier supplier like Stewart MacDonald or Luthier Mercantile International but I chose to make as many of these as I could, mostly to save money but also to add to the experience.
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| Cutting 2" dowel to make spool clamps |
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| drilling center holes with the drill press |
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adding cork to the spools
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