My First Build

A couple of years ago I accompanied my wife to a holiday party for an organization she belongs to. The group held it in the home of one of the members. The husband was retired, but had worked at both Fender and Peavey. He still built guitars as a hobby and a part-time business, and shop was pretty impressive! He was building electrics mostly, but had a couple of acoustics as well. I spent most of the party talking to him out in the shop.

I thought about the guy's shop for a while and decided to try one myself. Last year I cleaned up the rarely used workbench in the garage and set about to build my first guitar.

After looking in the local bookstores and on the web for ideas, I came across a few resources. The first was a book by Cumpiano and Natelson called Guitarmaking: Tradition and Technology.



I also found a couple of places to get the materials: Luthiers Mercantile International and Stewart-MacDonald. I thought it over for a while longer and decided to try out one of the acoustic guitar kits.

I had a workbench, a few hand tools and enough confidence in my own abilities that I wanted to do as much of the building process as possible. LMI had what I wanted: a kit with all the pieces in one box, but without doing too much of the work for me.

The basic steel string kit seemed like a good choice. It came with all the parts needed to make a guitar, the wood was at the needed dimensions, but all of the shaping was left to me. At a little less than $250, I felt like it was a good way to start.

So, here are some pictures of the finished product. I am pretty pleased with the results. It sounds great and gives me a real sense of accomplishment.

I didn't take pictures while I was building it. I have started on the second, and will include pictures as I go through the process.